Actress Olivia Hussey, who became an international symbol at the age of sixteen after playing Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s acclaimed production 1968 of Romeo and Juliet, has passed away.
Her family announced on her Instagram page that she passed away “peacefully at home” surrounded by loved ones.
She was 73. Olivia Hussey had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008, but had entered remission.
Zeffirelli’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s play, memorable both for its faithfulness to the original and its raw sensuality, made her famous alongside her co-star and then-boyfriend Leonard Whiting, one year her elder.
Whiting wrote a touching message on his wife’s Instagram responding to Olivia’s passing: “Olivia, we have shared so much since we were two sweet innocent children clinging onto each other for dear life as every photo of us attests to. Rest now my beautiful Juliet no injustices can hurt you now. And the world will remember your beauty inside and out forever. Leonard.”
In 2023, Hussey and Whiting filed a $500 million lawsuit (which was dismissed) against Paramount Pictures alleging sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud, as they claimed that the famous nude scene was filmed without their knowledge.
In any case, Olivia Hussey was born in 1951 in Buenos Aires, to Argentine opera singer Andrés Osuna (Osvaldo Ribó) and Joy Hussey, a legal secretary from England. She moved to London as a child, where she was discovered by Zeffirelli.
She acted in over 50 films in her six-decades-long career, such as in Black Christmas (1974) and Death On The Nile (1978). She played both the Virgin Mary (again with Zeffirelli) and Mother Theresa, although she reminisced in a truthful memoir that she felt that many of her youthful mistakes had dashed some of her professional potential, and that the price of early success was great: developing addiction, agoraphobia, an eating disorder.
Nevertheless, she remains a beauty symbol and a versatile actress remembered for her candor.
She is survived by three children.
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