Olivia Hussey, the actor who played Juliet as a teenager in the 1968 film “Romeo and Juliet,” has died, her family said on social media on Saturday. She was 73.
Hussey died Friday “peacefully at home surrounded by her loved ones,” according to a statement on her Instagram account.
Marc Huestis, a friend of Hussey since 2008, told CBS News that the actress had cancer.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Hussey was 15 when director Franco Zeffirelli cast her in his adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy after seeing her on stage in the play “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” which also starred Vanessa Redgrave.
“Romeo and Juliet” won two Oscars and Hussey won a Golden Globe for best new actress for her role as Juliet, opposite British actor Leonard Whiting, who was 16 at the time.
Decades later Hussey and Whiting has filed a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures for sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud over nude scenes in the film.
They claimed that they were initially told that they would be wearing flesh-colored undergarments in a bedroom scene, but on the day of the shoot, Zeffirelli told the couple that they would only be wearing body makeup and that the camera would be positioned so that they would not are. show nudity. They claimed they had been filmed naked without their knowledge.
CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images
The case was dismissed in 2023 by a Los Angeles County judge, who found their image could not be considered child pornography and the couple filed their claim too late.
Hussey was born on April 17, 1951 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and moved to London as a child.
She also played the role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the 1977 television series “Jesus of Nazareth” and in the 1978 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Death on the Nile.”
She is survived by her husband, David Glen Eisley, her three children and a grandson.
