Born Olivia Osuna , on Apr 17, 1951, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
From the Beaver down to Macaulay Culkin, the rule in Hollywood is: the younger they are when they get famous, the less to expect of them when they get older. Doe-eyed Olivia Hussey might have escaped this fate, since while she had been in drama school since she was four years old and professionally acting since she was 13, she didn't actually become famous until she was 16 when she appeared topless in Romeo & Juliet (the 1968 Zeffirelli version, not the cynically gen X-targeted version with Leonardo DiCaprio). No matter — the Young Actors Curse makes no exceptions. In Olivia's case, it manifested first in her developing agoraphobia, which got so bad that at the height of her fame she was obliged to retire from public life. It might have ended there, but then the money problems began, and between her alimony-less marriages and sticky-fingered accountant, Olivia soon found herself returning to film and even selling off her jewelry to make ends meet.
And has she made ends meet, at long last? It's hard to say. Certainly she's racked up a fair number of film credits since Romeo & Juliet, but mostly in films that few have heard of or remember outside of Japan, where for a time she was very popular. And therein lies the tragedy that's so prevalent in this web site: hailed everywhere as a rare natural beauty (she reportedly wore next to no make up), Olivia should have been a much celebrated icon in her day, but instead went unseen and unappreciated by most of the world. If Zeffirelli's Romeo & Juliet wasn't regularly shown in high school, chances are that no one would know that she ever even existed.
October 28, 2006 I just finished watching Headspace, a crappy, low-budget Jacob’s Ladder rip-off that I’ll probably forget I ever saw by tomorrow. But before I do, I must say that Olivia is a lot more generously endowed than I remember her being — not that she gets naked in this movie, or even close.
Of course, I immediately suspected a boob job — which she may indeed have had, for all I know — but after taking a careful look at some of the pictures here in the gallery again, it would seem that she’s always been blessed in the boob department — it’s just that her breasts have scarcely been shown on film to good advantage since she was 16, and then only for a split second.
A pleasant surprise ... and one completely wasted in this snoozer of a movie.
