R.I.P. Olivia Hussey, from Romeo And Juliet and Black Christmas

Olivia Hussey has died. An actor with a 60-year-career to her name, Hussey (later known as Olivia Hussey Eisley) broke out into international attention with her very first major film, starring in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film adaptation of Romeo And Juliet. (And becoming the leading cause of god knows how many middle and high school English teachers having to keep a piece of cardboard around to block parts of the screen while showing the film to students, owing to the movie’s controversial nude scene.) Six years later, Hussey helped create the template for the modern slasher heroine with her lead role in Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, and continued to act well into the new century in a variety of roles. Her death was announced on her Instagram today, with no cause of death stated. Hussey was 73.

Born in Argentina in the 1950s, Hussey came to acting at a young age, working in the London theater from the time she was 13. She caught the eye of Zeffirelli while starring opposite Vanessa Redgrave in a production of The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, and ultimately beat out 500 other young women for the part of Shakespeare’s famed doomed heroine Juliet in the director’s lavish version of the classic tale. Working opposite Leonard Whiting—with whom she’d maintain a 50-year friendship—Hussey got attention for capturing Juliet’s fresh-faced innocence and passion, even if both young leads occasionally fought to master Shakespeare’s complicated dialogues. The film was a critical darling (and moderate box office hit), with Hussey taking home the Most Promising Female Newcomer award at the year’s Golden Globes. Later in life, Hussey often spoke warmly (if also sounding a bit overwhelmed) about her experiences with the film—although she and Whiting did try, in 2022, and then again just a few months ago, to sue Paramount Pictures over the aforementioned nude scene, filmed when they were both just 16. (Judges shot the case down both times.)

After Romeo And Juliet, Hussey embarked on a full-fledge Hollywood career, albeit one that often had more success in the realm of B-movies than more A-list material. The ’70s saw her star in more high-brow projects like ITV’s ridiculously talent-stuffed Bible miniseries Jesus Of Nazareth, and the Peter Ustinov-led Agatha Christie adaptation Death On The Nile. But her role in Black Christmas is, in many ways, the more important one: As nice girl Jess (who stands in opposition to Margot Kidder’s far brassier Barb), Hussey is the vulnerable element on which so much of the movie’s horror beats rely. While not as active as many of her cinematic descendants, Jess was one of the first Western examples of the Final Girl, fighting off the killer (if only briefly) after the rest of her friends have been killed.

Those two elements—historical reserve on the one end, and blood-soaked horror on the other—largely 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 from Ivanhoe and The Last Days Of Pompeii to a small role in the IT TV movie, and a turn as Norman Bates’ mother in Psycho IV. She also picked up work as a voice actor, appearing in video games, and occasionally playing the role of Talia al Ghul in the DC Animated Universe (a part she shared at times with Helen Slater). She published a memoir, The Girl On The Balcony, in 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 Suicides, which starred her daughter India Eisley—the first time the two Romeo And Juliet co-stars had appeared together in a film in 47 years.