On set, Zeffirelli called her “Boobs O’Mina”. She’d swallowed the fear that her body was too curvy for the camera. In exchange, Romeo and Juliet gave Hussey immediate and eternal fame, plus a bottle of diet pills – the producers’ idea – that her mother furiously flushed down the toilet. Teenagers had had enough of dying for their parents’ feud. She and Whiting gave Zeffirelli’s blockbuster a jolt of youthful rebellion that wired a 400-year-old play to the anti-Vietnam war protests. The book is structured around a question Hussey poses on page four: “That girl on the balcony keeps asking, ‘Has the life I’ve given you been worth it?’” The role wasn’t a gift. Photograph: Globe Photos/Guy Webster/Rex/Shutterstock Hussey and her first husband, Dean Martin’s son Dino. If I know nothing else, I know that in two months your life can change completely.” She posts them on Instagram where today’s high-schoolers, who discovered the film in English lessons, message her asking if she and Leonard really dated (yes) and plead for love advice. “I must have had people photographing me everywhere I went,” she says. 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.
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