Olivia Hussey

I am old enough so that the version of Romeo and Juliet that we saw in my freshman English class was the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version. Now, that is a man who seems to have had some problems with consent. My English teacher, on seeing the nudity, said, “Oh, yeah, I should have had you guys get permission slips for this.” Hussey in her lifetime both said that the situation was completely comfortable because it was the last thing filmed and they were like family by then and that the filming caused her and costar Leonard Whiting emotional trauma and that they were supposed to have been in flesh-toned body stockings and weren’t. I don’t know. I do know she was kept out of the premiere because there were naked breasts in it.

Hussey was in many ways a woman of contradictions. She was a deeply religious Catholic who was twice-divorced and had an abortion. (After a sexual assault, so I’m certainly not saying I blame her, but still.) She also had a squabble on set with Bette Davis from playing Indian chants in her dressing room at six AM. She was a scream queen who played the Virgin Mary and Mother Teresa. She was a famous actress with agoraphobia. She treated the agoraphobia with meditation, which is probably what the chants were for and is another contradiction with the Catholicism. She made, you know, Romeo and Juliet and also some dreadful schlock.

She seems to have turned down assorted roles for various reasons. She was approached, she said, by Hal B. Wallis to be in Anne of the Thousand Days and True Grit and responded by saying she’d be fine with Anne but couldn’t see herself opposite John Wayne, which she said resulted in her being cast in neither. She would have been a fantastic Anne and she was quite right about John Wayne. Her particular vivacity was all wrong for that movie and perfect for Anne Boleyn.

It almost feels as though losing out on the roles she did hampered the rest of her career, because people considered her once and then didn’t cast her. I don’t know if it’s true, but Coppola considered her for Appolonia in The Godfather, cast someone else, and never worked with Hussey. Mike Nichols supposedly considered her for Working Girl, cast Melanie Griffith, and never worked with Hussey. Brian De Palma supposedly considered her for Scarface, had to recast for various reasons, and never worked with Hussey. It’s an odd trend.

Of course she was exquisite. We try not to dwell too much on personal appearance around here, but she was stunningly beautiful. It’s easy to wonder if people assumed she was only stunningly beautiful and not, you know, talented and therefore didn’t cast her. Which would have been a shame, because it’s quite clear she was also talented. Much as I like Claire Danes in the role, it’s Olivia Hussey’s Juliet who remains the gold standard, regardless of her level of consent in the nude scene. It’s her acting, not her breasts, that should be remembered from it.