Olivia Hussey, who dazzled moviegoers as the female star of Franco Zeffirelli‘s noteworthy 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, died Thursday. She was 73.
The Argentina-born actress died “at home 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.
She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008.
Hussey was just 15 when she starred opposite British actor Leonard Whiting as Romeo in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. 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 portrayed 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 slasher movie directed by Bob Clark and made in Canada, 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 Hussey in 1974’s ‘Black Christmas.’
Everett Collection
Olivia Osuna was born on April 17, 1951, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 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.
After the success of Romeo and Juliet, Hollywood producer Hal B. Wallis offered her the title role in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) and a co-starring role 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 withdraw his offer.
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 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 the Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990).
Also in 1990, she was Audra, wife of Richard Thomas’ Bill Denbrough, in the Stephen King miniseries It for ABC.
More recently, she worked as a voice actress in video games, including 1998’s Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, 2000’s Star Wars: Force Commander and 2011’s Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Hussey and Whiting reunited 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).
In 2023, the pair sued Paramount over accusations of child abuse while filming Romeo and Juliet. The actors, 15 and 16, respectively, when they shot the movie, accused Zeffirelli of pressuring 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 shown in the scene.
The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, with the judge finding claims that the movie depicts sexual acts are a “gross mischaracterization” of the scene. At the time, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Alison Mackenzie said the claims “arise from protected activity” under the First Amendment.
Her memoir, The Girl on the Balcony: Olivia Hussey Finds Life After Romeo and Juliet, was published in 2018.
In addition to her daughter, survivors include her husband of 35 years, David Glen Eisley, son of actor Anthony Eisley; her sons, Alexander and Max; and her grandson, Greyson.
She 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.
