‘Remarkable’ Olivia Hussey who has died aged 73 faced rape, beatings, infidelity and cancer after shooting to fame at just 15 as Zeffirelli’s Juliet

Olivia Hussey – who rose to fame starring in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo And Juliet – died at the age of 73 on Friday, December 27.

Her loved ones announced the late star’s passing on her main Instagram page, sharing that she passed away ‘peacefully at home’ just two days after Christmas.

Alongside a throwback image of the actress, the family labelled her a ‘remarkable person’ who had ‘lived a life full of passion.’

Olivia catapulted to fame when she was cast in the adaptation of William Shakespeare’s beloved play when she was just 15-years-old – but winning the role would go on to be a blessing and a curse for the young Argentinian actress.

She made appearances in over 50 projects in the span of six decades, such as in Black Christmas (1974) and Death On The Nile (1978).

The caption of the post shared by her loved ones read: ‘It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Olivia Hussey Eisley, who went peacefully at home surrounded by her loved ones on December 27th.’ 

‘Olivia was a remarkable person whose warmth, wisdom, and pure kindness touched the lives of all who knew her. Born on April 17th, 1951 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Olivia lived a life full of passion, love, and dedication to the arts, spirituality, and kindness towards animals,’ they continued.

Her family added that the late actress ‘leaves behind a loving family – her children, Alex, Max, and India, her husband of 35 years David Glen Eisley, and grandson, Greyson, and a legacy of love that will forever be cherished in our hearts.’ 

‘As we grieve this immense loss, we also celebrate Olivia’s enduring impact on our lives and the industry.’

Her loved ones concluded with, ‘We thank you for your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time and ask for privacy as we mourn the loss of a truly special soul.’ 

While Olivia enjoyed immense success throughout her life, she also battled multiple difficulties. 

The role of Juliet would be the defining one of her career, however, while the film’s success introduced her to fame and glamour, it also exposed her to terrible grief and self-doubt with two tumultuous marriages, a crippling case of agoraphobia, neurotic panic attacks, food compulsions, pot smoking, drinking and pills. 

Olivia was born on April 17, 1951, in Buenos Aires, Argentina – and was notably the daughter of Argentine opera singer Andrés Osuna. 

When she was a young girl, Hussey moved to London with her mother – who was from England – and her brother. In the city, she studied drama at Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts for five years. 

During an interview with The Guardian in 2018, she recalled discovering her interest for acting at a young age. ‘I used to walk around the house with a towel on my head pretending to be a nun.

‘One day I just said, “I don’t know about being a nun. I like pretending to be a nun. Maybe if I was an actress, I could pretend to be a nun and still be me.”‘ 

In her 2018 memoir, Olivia claimed she was raped and abused by her ex Christopher Jones (left), before her husband Dino Martin cheated on her whilst she was pregnant (right) 

Winning the role of Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet was a blessing and a curse for 15-year-old Argentinian actress Olivia Hussey (pictured in 2018) 

At the age of 13, the star continued to pursue her passion and began acting on the stage.  

In 1966, she appeared in the London production of The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie alongside actress Vanessa Redgrave. 

Her role in the stage play prompted her to be scouted for the Paramount movie, Rome And Juliet (1968) – which was directed by Franco Zeffirelli. She starred alongside Leonard Whiting, who played Romeo.

The movie was a box office success at the time of its release in theatres, and garnered around $38.9 million on a budget of $850K. 

It also received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. It ended up winning two for Best Costume Design and Best Cinematography. 

Olivia received a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer – Female, and was also honoured with the David di Donatello Award for her performance. 

However, in late 2022, both Hussey and her co-star Whiting sued Paramount over underage nude scenes in Romeo And Juliet. 

In the lawsuit, the two stars claimed that they had been misled by the director to disrobe for nude scenes that were shown in the final cut of the film.  

Hussey and Whiting said Zeffirelli originally told them there would not be any nudity in the film.

However, on the last day of filming, they claim he said the film ‘would fail’ unless they performed a scene nude while wearing body makeup. 

‘What they were told and what went on were two different things,’ said Tony Marinozzi, a business manager for the actors, in a statement at the time.

A judge dismissed the case who found the claims that the movie depicts sexual acts as a ‘gross mischaracterisation.’ 

Director Franco Zeffirelli passed away in 2019, and his son Pippo Zeffirelli responded to the lawsuit last year in January, per Deadline. 

Alongside a throwback image of the actress, the family labeled her a ‘remarkable person’ who had ‘lived a life full of passion’

‘It is embarrassing to hear that today, 55 years after filming, two elderly actors who owe their notoriety essentially to this film wake up to declare that they have suffered an abuse that has caused them years of anxiety and emotional discomfort.’ 

Olivia and Leonard filed another lawsuit, but a few months earlier in October of this year, the case was dismissed a second time in the Los Angeles Superior Court. 

During her past interview with The Guardian in 2018, Hussey reflected on her role in the 1968 film. 

‘I loved playing Juliet,’ she expressed. ‘The only part I didn’t like was all the PR. It was exhausting, and I was this wild little thing.’

In addition, the intoxicating spotlight that overnight celebrity ushered in – something the young girl had dreamed of since age four – also brought on a weight gain that required diet pills morning and night making her hyper and stressed out.

The studio demanded she see a specialist for being ‘plump’, something that had never bothered her – but it did the studio.

‘I began to hate my body and this warped body image would turn into a compulsion,’ Hussey wrote in her memoir, The Girl on the Balcony.

‘Where once I saw food as a great joy, I now began to see it as an enemy. I have never really had a slim body type. It’s more buxom or curvy,’ Hussey writes, and quotes Sophia Loren who once said, ‘Everything you see I owe to pasta’. 

Hussey’s mother quickly put an end to the pills and specialists but ‘a seed had been planted’.

With all this attention while filming Romeo and Juliet in the Roman countryside and being looked after by a chaperone, Hussey admits she was ‘budding into a little diva.’

‘I loved playing Juliet,’ she expressed. ‘The only part I didn’t like was all the PR. It was exhausting, and I was this wild little thing’; seen in 2007 in L.A. 

The movie was released in 1968 to critical acclaim and earned Zeffirelli an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, but the two co-stars claimed they were misled by the director to disrobe for nude scenes that were shown in the final cut of the film and tried to bring legal action in 2022 – but it was thrown out by the judge

The once, sweet and shy teenager was no more. She became petulant, a brat, opinionated and quick to judge others as well as taking no advice.

Before filming actually began, Olivia says she felt severe cramping and sudden stabbing pains through her whole body, ‘lightning bolts of pain’ that had been brought on by stress or too much food.

It was something she had experienced before – rumbling appendicitis – but the director wanted her appendix out without delay.

Olivia was terrified – this far from home and alone. ‘After a terrible night of self-recrimination and pain, I woke up feeling better.

‘Whether the problem had been stress, exhaustion, or too much focaccia, I didn’t know. All I cared about was that I was finally well enough. I could be Juliet’, she writes.

Filming began in a small town in Tuscany with Hussey wearing what became the staple of her wardrobe, a ‘dreaded bodice’, so tight that it had to unlaced down the back after takes to allow her to breathe.

But it pushed up her breasts and made her look voluptuous. 

Zeffirelli would take her hands and say, ‘Oh, my little Boobs O’Mina’, something Hussey hated.

But her breasts attracted her Romeo and an intimacy developed between Olivia and her co-star, Leonard Whiting. But the actress writes that she did not sleep with him.

They got drunk together and kissed but he was busy dating every Italian girl between 18 and 35 while she drank gin and tonics and intoxicatingly danced the night away in discos in Rome.

The London opening of Romeo And Juliet was a Royal Command Performance before the Queen and royal family at the London Palladium leaving the actress nervous over etiquette for the royal introduction

The role catapulted Olivia to global fame, but she was left feeling overwhelmed by the exposure and suffered crippling anxiety 

The movie was released in 1968 to critical acclaim and earned Zeffirelli an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. 

However, despite the film’s success, Hussey realised she didn’t know how to cultivate relationships and had no one she could ask for advice.

She turned down many viable projects, never learning how to network.

The London opening of the film was a Royal Command Performance before the Queen and royal family at the London Palladium leaving the actress nervous over etiquette for the introduction.

She broke out into a fit of giggles, walked onstage with Zeffirelli and Leonard and peed on the spot. 

‘Years later, I would be diagnosed with a severe form of agoraphobia: large crowds, open spaces, and uncontrollable social situations fill me with dread’, wrote Hussey in her memoir.

She waved politely at the late Queen Elizabeth II seated below and escaped for a wardrobe change.

Sitting next to the then-Prince Charles at a long dining table, she complained about how much her feet hurt.

After Romeo & Juliet was released, Olivia didn’t act for two years – however she later appeared in a number of programmes and films, including The Bastard (pictured, in 1978) 

The actress had not appeared on screen since 2015, when she appeared in the British film Social Suicide, based on Romeo and Juliet

‘Oh, dear. Well, you must go ahead and rest them on my knees, then’, the royal replied and they carried on talking about films.

It was a year and a half before she accepted another film offer due to her struggle with agoraphobia.

However, she was meeting actors and connected with actor Christopher Jones, hot off the film, Wild in the Streets, and being talked about as the next James Dean.

Hussey accepted a lunch date that morphed into a romance as well as what she describes as one of the darkest periods of her life.

She had been warned by Jones’s manager, Rudy Altobelli, that Jones might not be the right guy for her, but she read that as Altobelli flirting.

Jones was having a breakdown on the set of Ryan’s Daughter in Ireland, distressing cast and crew. 

He would sit staring off and then abruptly accuse a member of the film crew of stealing from him.

His attacks turned on Hussey, who was 17 at the time, in love and trying to understand her boyfriend.

One night while talking in bed, he allegedly punched her in the stomach and then held her close and apologised.

The production company decided to medicate him and it was up to Hussey to mix it in his morning oatmeal.

His mood swings calmed down on some days, other days he figured he was being poisoned because he felt too good.

Once, Jones threw the bowl of oatmeal at Olivia, insisting she eat it and laughed ghoulishly before running off.

When filming was over, Hussey wanted nothing more to do with the actor and in 1969, she moved to Los Angeles.

First stop, Altobelli’s home on the infamous Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, just north of Beverly Hills and the very site of the Charles Manson murder spree earlier that summer.

‘The whole time I lived at Cielo Drive there was nothing strange or macabre about it. I was still very young, and by the time I arrived, all traces of the crime had been erased’ – but for the fact that Altobelli had allowed Christopher to live in the back house temporarily. The ground rules were she would never be left alone with him and Jones understood they were no longer a couple.

Hussey was now caught up in the Hollywood scene of glamorous parties, and meeting big stars. 

She writes she never considered accepting any job offers. She wasn’t feeling anxiety or pressure and just settling into ‘this new, sunnier way of living’.

She met Dino Martin, son of singer Dean Martin and his wife Jeanne. Dino was considered a golden boy, nonchalant about his famous family.

Dino romanced Olivia, took her to all the famous Hollywood restaurants, introduced her to stars and his best friend, Desi Arnaz, Jr., son of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

The scene at Rudy’s was also exciting with stars dropping by. Sally Kellerman, John Savage, Jack Nicholson even came to smoke a joint.

Olivia then began a short-lived affair with Terry Melcher, Doris Day’s son, a record producer.

Rudy loved smoking dope and Olivia joined him becoming more paranoid throughout the day. Dino would join them and they’d head off to satisfy their munchies. 

But then some dark sinister force brought Christopher Jones into her bedroom one night at Cielo Drive.

Hussey thought one of Rudy’s dogs had pushed open the door but then the door closed. 

Jones was hallucinating and hearing voices, twitching while whispering sweetly but incoherently and then he was suddenly punching and beating Olivia for an hour ‘all the while grinding his teeth and snarling, his spittle spraying me’, she writes.

‘Then he raped me’.

In 1980 she married a Japanese singer Akira Fuse with whom she had a baby boy before divorcing in 1989. Living between Japan and Hollywood took its toll on Olivia and Akira’s relationship and although they remained friends, they later divorced

‘In some way, I had always know that it would come to this; that it was only a matter of time before the dam broke and all of Chris’s anger washed over me’, writes Hussey.

She called Dino whose first words were ‘I’m going to have him killed’.

Olivia’s lip was split open. There was dark bruising around her eyes and on the side of her head. He had pulled out a clump of her hair and her nose was bloodied.

She didn’t leave the Cielo Drive house for two months but Dino visited every day. 

When she recovered, she went to the gynecologist who confirmed she was pregnant. Conferring with Dino, Rudy, and a psychiatrist, Olivia decided to abort the baby. 

While lying in a bed in Cedar-Sinai hospital before the abortion, when Dino left, Christopher walked in. He apologised and pleaded with her to keep the baby.

She said she couldn’t and that he must never come near her again or she’d reveal that he had viciously raped her.

She rang the nurse’s bell and Christopher exited. Hussey never saw him again.

Jones died in 2014 of complications from gallbladder cancer – after three marriages and seven children.

Dino had been there to support Olivia throughout her ordeal and she fell in love with him.

‘Out of that horror came some of the brightest, happiest days of my life. I was very much in love’, writes Hussey. She also adored Dino’s family. 

They tied the knot in Vegas and Olivia was so into the marriage, she even learned to cook.

When Desi Jr. started dating Liza Minelli, she and Olivia became close friends as well as the godmother of Olivia’s first child.

The two couples spent a lot of time together, flying to Vegas and back the same night, getting tipsy on Saturday nights at Madeo’s, a hot Beverly Hills restaurant, and Sunday morning hitting tennis balls to dispel hangovers.

‘I lived in a strange kind of balance between my newfound love of domestic life and the still-surreal glamour of Hollywood, and it was never boring’.

When the offer came in to work on the film, Summertime Killer, starring Christopher Mitchum and Karl Malden on location in Spain for six weeks, Hussey jumped at it.

Her contract included special lunches to ensure she stay on a diet. When the movie wrapped in Madrid, Barcelona was the next shoot and her diet included one plate of pasta a day and hours at the hotel pool working on her tan. 

Once back in LA, she had the taste to work on a bigger film and beat out Natalie Wood for the role of Maria in the big budget film, Lost Horizon.

The location was the Warner Bros. Studio lot. A day after signing, she learned she was pregnant.

She confided her condition to the costume designer who promised to keep it a secret and keep making her wardrobe bigger.

She and Dino had a beautiful baby boy, Alexander Gunther Martin but the marriage turned out to be a flop, as did the film.

Dino had begun cheating on her when Olivia was seven months pregnant.

‘A light had gone out and we both knew it. If we’d been older, perhaps we’d have gone to counselling,’ she wrote. 

However, she and Liza fell out after they both tried out for the lead role in the film Camille. 

The glory days were over. Dino was arrested for an illegal gun collection. They sold their house, split the money and went their separate ways.

Binge eating, booze, diet pills, sleeping pills washed down with white wine spritzers –all became routine – until Hussey was introduced to Swami Muktananda, a gentle Indian guru who now became the center of her life and helped lead her out of her misery.

She still had panic attacks and trouble getting outside of her own head.

She met and married a Japanese singer, Akira Fuse, had a baby boy before a third marriage to ‘stone-cold rock star hunk’, David Glenn Eisley, in 1991.

Olivia was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer in the summer of 2008.

However she opted not to pursue chemotherapy or radiation and instead underwent a double mastectomy to treat the cancer. 

A decade later, she found the breast cancer had returned when a small tumour was discovered growing between her heart and lungs.

Hussey, who is survived by her third husband David Eisely (pictured),was described as a ‘remarkable’ person by her family when they announced she had died

Hussey had been married to David Eisley since 1991. The two shared a daughter, India Eisley (right) who had a role in The Secret Life of the American Teenager 

In 2018, the actress released her memoir titled The Girl On The Balcony and told People at the time, ‘It’s been quite a life. I feel grateful that I survived it all’; seen in 1968 

She opted to use radiation and chemotherapy to treat the tumour, stating: ‘I’d refused chemotherapy and radiation treatment 10 years ago, wanting to avoid those poisons, but last year I had no choice, and they saved my life. 

‘The tumour shrank, I’m hoping to the size of a pea, and I’m doing well now. I’m healthy and happy.’

She last appeared on screen since 2015, when she appeared in the British film Social Suicide, based on Romeo and Juliet. 

In 2021, she revealed to DailyMail she was ‘broke’, saying: ‘I’ve had terrible luck…I went from being comfortable to being overdrawn.’  

Olivia is survived by her husband David Glen Eisley, her three children, Alex, Max, and India, as well as her grandson Greyson.