It was exhausting, and I was this wild little thing.” Online, she’s continually discovering shots of herself she’s never seen. “The only part I didn’t like was all the PR. “I loved playing Juliet,” says Hussey today. One older reporter lectured: “There aren’t many girls at 15 I know that smoke cigarettes publicly.” Hussey coolly replied: “Oh, there are.” She gazed at him impassively and took a drag. The journalists who managed to pin her down for a quote fumbled for words. Her miniskirts and hippy hair were a sign that the kids – and maybe the whole globe – were changing. Part of the reason the public was obsessed with her Juliet was that Hussey was a groovy 60s teenager who danced and drank and befuddled her elders. Hussey represented that generational change, though her autobiography is too modest to say it. Meanwhile, Dino surprised his bride by bringing the Bee Gees home for dinner. Dinner at the in-laws meant meeting everyone from Sammy Davis Jr and Truman Capote to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Dino was the eldest son of the Rat Pack’s Dean Martin. “Terry was a sweetheart,” says Hussey, “but he was fucked up.” Hussey found herself at the centre of a celebrity shift. Hussey briefly dated Terry Melcher, then thought to be Charles Manson’s intended target, who now travelled with bodyguards. Overnight, everyone began locking their doors. It was a dramatic introduction to Los Angeles. ‘I like pretending’ … Hussey as Mary in Jesus of Nazareth. When you walked in there, there were no bad vibes or anything. There was a button under the desk in the living room that buzzed directly to the Beverly Hills police. “People would say, ‘How could you live there?’ I’d say it was actually the safest house in Hollywood. “I could hear her say, ‘And that Abigail Folger was lying over there and she had lots of stab wounds,’” says Hussey. One morning, Hussey was making coffee when Manson girl Linda Kasabian gave District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi a walkthrough of the attack. She arrived in Los Angeles a month after Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson family – and moved into the crime scene on Cielo Drive, which was owned by her manager Rudi Altobelli. The Girl on the Balcony is most startling when Hussey rappels off Shakespeare’s ledge to scamper around Hollywood. ‘I knew he was in love with me’ … Zeffirelli directing Hussey and Leonard Whiting in Romeo and Juliet. After Romeo and Juliet – which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year – turned her and co-star Leonard Whiting into international idols, she went on to play both the Virgin Mary and Mother Teresa. Maybe if I was an actress, I could pretend to be a nun and still be me.” Her vow came true. “One day I just said, ‘I don’t know about being a nun. “I used to walk around the house with a towel on my head pretending to be a nun,” says Hussey, now 67. All I felt was the sweetness of Sharon Tate Olivia Hussey As Hussey recounts in her lively new autobiography, The Girl on the Balcony, a year after the trio arrived in the UK, she turned to her mother and announced: “I think it’s time I started taking my career seriously.” She was eight. As a child, Hussey – birth name Osuna – left Buenos Aires for London with her mother and brother, unaware that she wouldn’t see her father again until she became so famous that the Argentinean government flew her home to hug her grandmother on live TV.įame hadn’t taken long to arrive. The paper noted that director Franco Zeffirelli’s 16-year-old heroine still spoke Shakespeare with a Spanish lilt. “For safety,” star Olivia Hussey insisted to the Guardian. I would really love that.A t their first press conference in 1967, Romeo and Juliet clutched each other’s hands. Sigh! I hope that maybe a day will come when we will finally see Romeo and Juliet with a “Just married” board. So, what do the directors suggest behind the cover of Romeo and Juliet? Kill yourselves, and commit suicide, rather than teaching parents to accept. These difference can be in terms of family dispute or cast or ethnicity or religion or basically anything, because in India, anyone you choose yourself, turns out to be “different” as per your family. I think it is just a cover to highlight how different two people, who have fallen in love with each other are, with each other and how it is better for them to die, than their parents to relent and happily accept their love. Honestly, I am not a big fan of Romeo and Juliet and I will tell you why.