You want to talk about a long lasting career of highlights, let’s talk about winning a Golden Globe and playing Norma Bates in one of the Psycho movies! Born in Argentina in April 1951, Olivia Hussey would grow up to maintain a particularly fun career in Hollywood. At a young age, she branched out and tackled just about every genre of film, even going as far as to win her first big award in 1969 at the age of 18. For this column’s sake, though, I’m going to focus primarily on her work in horror, scifi and fantasy.
She started getting her feet wet in 1972 when she played the lead role of Tania in horror-thriller Summertime Killer, which she followed up the following year with a supporting role in musical-fantasy Lost Horizon. She booked her first real horror film in 1974 with a small role in the iconic beginners slasher Black Christmas. Several years later she returned to the genre as a supporting player in horror-comedy The Cat and the Canary (1978) before going on another genre hiatus which ended with a small role in 1980’s Day of Resurrection.
She landed the lead role in another end of the world horror/scifi flick in 1982 with Escape 2000 before playing the iconic role of Norma Bates in Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990). She appeared in two other historic movies following Psycho, though they were small roles: as Audra in Stephen King’s IT (1990) and Rosie in Ice Cream Man (1995). She continued to book small parts in a series of titles including The Dark Mist and The Gardener in the late 90’s, just as her career started to slow down.
So, where is Olivia Hussey now?
Her career slowed down, but it never stopped. She continued to act in genres across the board, but her appearances were more sporadic and spaced out. Some of her most recent work includes playing the title character in Mother Teresa (2003) and a cameo in romance-drama Social Suicide (2015). As far as horror and scifi are concerned, she’s only tackled one small role in 2005’s Headspace. She also has two movies due for release in 2016 titled 1066 and One Week in Hollywood.
