The British actress, known for playing Juliet in a acclaimed adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, has died at age 73.
British actress Olivia Hussey, winner of a Golden Globe for her role as a teenage Juliet in the film Romeo and Juliet by Franco Zeffirelli in 1968, died Friday December 27 at the age of 73, his family announced.
“Olivia was a remarkable person whose warmth, wisdom and pure kindness touched the lives of all who knew her,” her family said in a statement posted on their Instagram account.
Complaint against Paramount
Born in Buenos Aires, Olivia Hussey was 15 when she and her partner Leonard Whiting, then 16, played the famous lovers in the adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy. Nominated in the best film category at the 1969 Oscars, it won two statuettes: best cinematography and best costumes.
The film was talked about again in 2023, when the two actors filed a complaint against the studio Paramount Pictures for a scene of non-consensual nudity. An American judge later dismissed the complaint and ruled in favor of Paramount.
Olivia Hussey, who won the Golden Globe for “New Star of the Year” for her performance, will later star in the horror film Black Christmas in 1974 and in the adaptation of Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie in 1978, among other projects.
