Olivia Hussey, the actress known for Romeo and Juliet and Black Christmas, died on Friday, December 27, 2024. Her family announced her passing on social media, stating that she died while surrounded by family. She was 73 years old.

Hussey played the tragic lovestruck teenager Juliet Capulet in the 1968 movie adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. She was also well known for her role in Black Christmas, the twisted, holiday-set horror movie that came out in ’73.

She was born Olivia Osuna in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 17, 1951, and she grew up in London where she studied drama at the Italia Conti Academy. Hussey was starring in the West End production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie when she was spotted by filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli who cast her as Juliet.

After Black Christmas, she played Mary in the miniseries, Jesus of Nazareth, and she starred in the film adaptation of Death on the Nile. Hussey was in The Cat and the Canary, The Last Days of Pompeii miniseries, she played Norma Bates in Psycho IV: The Beginning, and played Audra Denbrough in the It miniseries.

She starred in Ice Cream Man, she played Topanga’s aunt in Boy Meets World, and voiced Talia al Ghul in Superman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond. Hussey loaned her voice to multiple Star Wars video games, including Rogue Squadron, Force Commander, and The Old Republic. Her final role was in 2015’s Social Suicide

In 2018, Hussey wrote her memoir, The Girl on the Balcony: Olivia Hussey Finds Life After Romeo and Juliet. Four years later, she and Romeo and Juliet co-star Leonard Whiting filed a lawsuit against Paramount, the film’s distributor, for exploitation, sexual abuse, negligence, and distribution of nude images of children. The two actors, who were 15 and 16 years old during filming, claimed that they were told that their performances would not require nudity and that they were pressured by Zeffirelli to be naked for their love scene. The lawsuit was thrown out by the judge, as was the one they filed in 2024.