Olivia Hussey, who dazzled moviegoers as the female star of Franco Zeffirelli‘s 1968 fabled 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.
Hussey was just 15 when she starred opposite Leonard Whiting as Romeo in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, also co-written by Zeffirelli. The Paramount film was nominated for the best picture Oscar and three other Academy Awards, and she received a David di Donatello award and a Golden Globe for her efforts.
Hussey also worked with the Italian filmmaker with a turn as Mary in the 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth and appeared as the sulky Rosalie Otterbourne, the daughter of Angela Lansbury’s character, in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile (1978), directed by John Guillermin.
And in Black Christmas (1974), the cult slasher horror movie directed by Bob Clark and made in Canada, she was memorable as Jess Bradford, terrorized in her sorority house.
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 from England.
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, 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 — that said she “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).
More recently, she worked as a voice actress in Star Wars video games, including 1998’s Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, 2000’s Star Wars: Force Commander and 2011’s Star Wars: The Old Republic.
In 2015, Hussey and Whiting reunited for the film Social Suicide, a modern take on Romeo and Juliet, to portray the Capulet parents. It would be her final onscreen credit.
In 2023, the pair sued Paramount over accusations of child abuse while filming Romeo and Juliet. The actors, who were 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.
Survivors include her husband of 35 years, David Glen Eisley; her children, Alexander, Max and India; 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 actor-writer Akira Fuse from 1980 until their 1989 divorce.
More to come …
