Olivia Hussey, Star of Franco Zeffirelli’s ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Dies at 73
Olivia Hussey, who dazzled moviegoers as the female lead in Franco Zeffirelli‘s noteworthy 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, died Friday at her Los Angeles home of breast cancer. She was 73.
The Argentina-born actress died “surrounded by her loved ones,” according to an announcement on her official Instagram account. “Olivia was a remarkable person whose warmth, wisdom, and pure kindness touched the lives of all who knew her,” the post reads.
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She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008.
Hussey was just 15 when she starred opposite British actor Leonard Whiting, 16, as Romeo in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Both were unknowns. The Paramount-distributed film, co-written by Zeffirelli, was nominated for the best picture Oscar and three other Academy Awards, and she received a David di Donatello prize and a Golden Globe for her efforts.
Hussey also worked with the Italian filmmaker with a turn as Mary in the international and epic 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, and she was angelic again as the lead in Mother Teresa of Calcutta (2003).
She was memorable as Jess Bradford, terrorized in her sorority house, in Black Christmas (1974), the cult Canadian slasher movie directed by Bob Clark, and was the sulky Rosalie Otterbourne, the daughter of Angela Lansbury‘s character, in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile (1978), directed by John Guillermin.
Olivia Osuna was born on April 17, 1951, in Buenos Aires. Her father was an Argentine opera singer who went by the stage name Osvaldo Ribó, and her mother, Joy, was an English-born legal secretary.
When she was 7, her mom took her and her younger brother to London, and she attended the Italia Conti Academy drama school for five years. She acted in the theater for the first time when she was 13, taking her mother’s maiden name as her stage name.
Her performance in a 1966 West End production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie opposite Vanessa Redgrave led her to Zeffirelli.
Romeo and Juliet, shot in Italy and featuring narration from an uncredited Laurence Olivier, introduced a new generation to Shakespearean tragedy, created notoriety at the time for showing Hussey topless and was a big hit for Paramount, which was in trouble at the time.
After the resounding success of the film, Hollywood producer Hal B. Wallis offered her the title role in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) and a co-starring gig alongside John Wayne in True Grit (1969), but an offhand remark that she made — she said “couldn’t see herself with Wayne” — led Wallis to look elsewhere.
Instead, she followed with roles in the British romantic drama All the Right Noises (1970), the Italian crime film The Summertime Killer (1972) and a remake of Lost Horizon (1973).
Hussey appeared in The Man With Bogart’s Face (1980), the Japanese sci-fi film Virus (1980), a remake of Ivanhoe (1982) and the Australian horror film Turkey Shoot (1982) and played the mother of Norman Bates (a returning Anthony Perkins) in Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990).
Also in 1990, she portrayed Audra, wife of Richard Thomas’ Bill Denbrough, in the Stephen King miniseries It for ABC.
She worked as a voice actress in Star Wars, Batman and Superman video games before reuniting with Whiting for the 2015 film Social Suicide, a modern take on Romeo and Juliet, to portray the Capulet parents. It would be her final onscreen credit. (Her daughter, India Eisley, played their daughter, Julia Coulson, in the movie).
Her memoir, The Girl on the Balcony: Olivia Hussey Finds Life After Romeo and Juliet, was published in 2018.
In 2023, Hussey and Whiting sued Paramount over accusations of child abuse while filming Romeo and Juliet. The actors said Zeffirelli pressured them into doing a bedroom scene in the nude despite initially being told they could wear flesh-colored body suits. Whiting’s buttocks and Hussey’s bare breasts are seen.
The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, with the judge finding claims that the movie depicts sexual acts as a “gross mischaracterization.” A second lawsuit was dismissed in October as well.
In addition to her daughter, survivors include her husband of 35 years, David Glen Eisley, son of actor Anthony Eisley (Hawaiian Eye); her sons, Alexander and Max; and her grandson, Greyson.
Hussey also was married to Dean Paul Martin, the son of actor-singer Dean Martin, from 1971 until their 1978 divorce, and to Japanese actor-writer-singer Akira Fuse from 1980 until their 1989 divorce.
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