RIP Olivia Hussey, from Romeo And Juliet and Black Christmas

Olivia Hussey is dead. An actor with a 60-year career behind him, Hussey (later known as Olivia Hussey Eisley) burst into international attention with his very first major film, starring in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. (And by becoming the leading reason for god knows how many middle and high school English teachers have to carry around a piece of cardboard to block parts of the screen while showing the film to students, due to the film’s controversial nudity scene.) Six years later, Hussey helped create the template for the modern slasher heroine with her starring role in Bob Clark’s Black Christmasand continued to appear well into the new century in a variety of roles. Her death was announced on her Instagram todayno cause of death specified. Hussey was 73.

Born in Argentina in the 1950s, Hussey entered acting at a young age, working in London theater from the age of 13. She caught Zeffirelli’s eye while starring opposite Vanessa Redgrave in a production of Miss Jean Brodie Prime Ministerand ultimately beat out 500 other young women for the role of Shakespeare’s famous doomed heroine Juliet in the director’s lavish version of the classic tale. Working opposite Leonard Whiting – with whom she would maintain a 50-year friendship – Hussey gained attention for capturing Juliet’s fresh innocence and passion, even as both young protagonists occasionally struggled to master Shakespeare’s complicated dialogue. The film was a critical darling (and moderate box office hit), with Hussey earning the award for Most Promising Female Newcomer at that year’s Golden Globes. Later in life, Hussey often spoke warmly (if also sounding a little overwhelmed) of her experiences with the film — though she and Whiting tried in 2022, and again just a few months ago, to sue Paramount Pictures over the aforementioned nudity. scene, filmed when they were both just 16. (Judges shot down the case both times.)

After Romeo and JulietHussey embarked on a full-fledged Hollywood career, albeit one that was often more successful in B-movies than more A-list material. The 70s saw her star in more high-brow projects such as ITV’s ridiculously talented Bible mini-series Jesus of Nazarethand the Peter Ustinov-led Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile. But her role in Black Christmas is in many ways the more important: As sweet girl Jess (who stands in opposition to Margot Kidder’s far-brass Barb), Hussey is the vulnerable element on which so much of the film’s horror beats depend. Although not as active as many of her cinematic descendants, Jess was one of the first Western examples of a Final Girl to fight the killer (if only briefly) after the rest of her friends have been killed.

These two elements – historical reserve on one end and blood-soaked horror on the other – pretty much outlined the span of Hussey’s career as the 70s gave way to the 80s and 90s. Her filmography from the period runs the gamut Ivanhoe and The last days of Pompeii for a small role in THE TV movie and a turn as Norman Bates’ mother Psycho IV. She also took work as a voice actor, appeared in video games and occasionally played the role of Talia al Ghul in the DC Animated Universe (a role she sometimes shared with Helen Slater). She published a memoir, The girl on the balconyin 2018, reflecting on her career and her romances (including three marriages, the last to musician David Glen Eisley). Her last official film credit was in 2015, where she appeared opposite Whiting in Social suicidewhich starred her daughter India Eisley – the first time for the two of them Romeo and Juliet co-stars had appeared together in a film for 47 years.