Born in Argentina to British parents, dark-eyed actress Olivia Hussey was "introduced" in Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 production of Romeo and Juliet; in point of fact, she had been in films from 1965, though never in any sort of starring capacity. Much was made at the time of the extreme youth of Hussey and her Romeo, Leonard Whiting. It was said that she was the first movie Juliet who was a genuine teenager rather than an established, venerated screen star; even so, at 16 Hussey was still two or three years older than Shakespeare's Juliet. Few of her subsequent films were on the same artistic or box-office level as Romeo and Juliet, though Hussey was a most fetching damsel in distress in 1978's Death on the Nile and a competent "femme fatale" in 1980's The Man With Bogart's Face. Olivia Hussey has been married to actor/tennis player Dean Paul Martin and Japanese recording artist Akira Fuse, respectively.
Olivia Hussey
Share on
Biography by AllMovie
Movie Highlights
Factsheet
- Trained at the famed Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London for several years as a young child.
- Rose to international prominence as a teenager, playing the role of Juliet in director Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 film adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
- Has three children, each from a different marriage, and each born 10 years apart (Alexander Martin, 1973; Max Fuse, 1983; India Eisley, 1993).
- Suffered from agoraphobia.