I felt a catch in my throat when I heard that Olivia Hussey had died at 73. She will always be Juliet to me, a role I saw her play in a movie theater in 1968 when the Zefferelli film first came out.
I was already very familiar with “Romeo and Juliet,” because we had studied it in depth in junior high school, acting out every scene in classroom readings. I described the process in this 2007 post:
[Our teacher] Mr. Jones tackled the whole thing by making us read every single word aloud. He called on some students to act out each part for a few pages, then switched to other students, and on and on, right to the last line. It took months. No matter how embarrassed we were, or what poor actors we were, or how we stumbled and faltered, we had to read those words. And he was big on non-traditional casting, too; he’d sometimes call on the boys to read the female parts and vice-versa. Talk about embarrassment!
One boy, Carl Anderson, who had the platinum hair and fair skin of his Norwegian forebearers, blushed scarlet every time he was called on to read. Then he’d blush even more startlingly scarlet as embarrassing words were revealed (“Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast! Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!”). But read he did.
Some read in monotones, some gave it pizazz. And then, after every couple of lines, Mr. Jones would have them pause and try to explain the meaning. If they couldn’t guess, the class would tackle it. If all else failed, Mr. Jones would tell us. But, line by line, the wonderful and sorrowful story emerged, and we slowly got better at deciphering it.
As the characters came alive for us, line by line, Shakespeare (and Mr. Jones) managed that feat at which the writers of so many modern movies fail abysmally: making us care about the characters, and making us believe the lovers actually love each other, and showing us why. We loved Romeo and Juliet, too; and we could see that they were exceptionally well-suited to one another, each able to express emotions in ways no other teenagers ever have or ever will.
But when I saw the 1968 movie I was stunned at how beautiful both Hussey and her Romeo, Leonard Whiting, were. They were good actors, too, and the movie was heartrending at conveying the desperate intensity and joy of young love. I cried a great deal when I watched it, and you know what? I still cry when I watch it. Zefferelli cut some of the lines to make the movie’s pace quicker, but it’s a brilliant movie and the casting of Hussey and Whiting was especially so.
Here’s the scene where Romeo and Juliet first see each other:
And of course there’s the death scene. I can’t find a video that shows all the parts I want, so I’ll post this in two segments:
RIP, Olivia Hussey.