Romeo and Juliet actress dies aged 73

Actress Olivia Hussey, who rose to international fame as a teenager for her role in the 1968 classic Romeo and Juliet, has died aged 73.

The Argentine-born artist, who grew up in London, died on Friday surrounded by his loved ones, a statement was posted on his Instagram.

Hussey won a Golden Globe for her performance as Juliet, but decades later she sued Paramount Pictures for sexually abusing her when she was 15 during a nude scene for the movie.

Her other notable film role was as Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the 1977 TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth.

“While we mourn this great loss, we also celebrate the impact Olivia made on our lives and our industry,” he said.

Hussey was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1951, before moving to London at the age of seven and studying at the Italia Conti Academy drama school.

She was 15 when Romeo and Juliet director Franco Zeffirelli found her on stage, playing opposite Vanessa Redgrave in the play The Prime of Miss Joan Brodie.

Zeffirelli was looking for someone who was young enough to be a convincing Juliet in what he wanted to be a definitive version of Shakespeare’s film.

He cast Hussey alongside 16-year-old British Leonard Whiting as Romeo in the film.

The film was nominated for an Oscar for best picture and director. Hussey narrowly missed out on an Oscar nomination in a strong year in which Barbra Streisand won the top prize for Funny Girl.

But at that year’s Golden Globes Hussey won the best new star award.

Decades later, he and Whiting sued Paramount Pictures claiming that Zeffirelli — who died in 2019 — had encouraged them to take nude photos even though he had already been assured that he should not have done so.

The pair sought more than $500m (£417m) in damages, based on the pain they claim they have suffered and the revenue the film has brought in since its release.

But last year a the judge dismissed the casefinding the scene wasn’t “sexy enough”.

In 1977, Hussey reunited with Zeffirelli to play Jesus of Nazareth as the Virgin Mary, before appearing in Death on the Nile the following year based on Agatha Christie’s novel.

Her roles in the brilliant film Black Christmas (1974) and the TV series Psycho IV: The Beginning made her known as a scream queen. Finally, they laid Norman Bates’s motherinaprequelstoryline[anayikaamayiakeaNormanBatesmunkhaniyoyamba[layedNormanBates’smotherinaprequelstoryline

In recent years he has also started a career in voice acting, appearing frequently in video games.

But he was last reunited with Romeo of old – when he and Whiting appeared together in the 2015 British film Social Suicide, loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, though set in the TV era.