The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director. Hussey herself didn’t receive an Oscar nomination in a strong year that saw Barbra Streisand win the top prize for Funny Girl.
But Hussey won Best New Star at that year’s Golden Globes.
Decades later, she and Whiting sued Paramount Pictures, claiming that Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, encouraged them to shoot nude scenes despite previous assurances that they would not have to.
The couple sought more than $500m (£417m) in damages based on the suffering they said they had endured and the profits the film had made since its release.
But last year a the judge dismissed the casefinding that the scene was not “sexy enough”.
Hussey reunited with Zeffirelli for Jesus of Nazareth in 1977 to play the Virgin Mary, before appearing a year later in Death on the Nile, based on Agatha Christie’s novel.
Her roles in the early slasher Black Christmas (1974) and the TV movie Psycho IV: The Beginning earned her recognition as a scream queen. In the latter, she played Norman Bates’ mother in the prequel storyline.
In later years, she also took up work as a voice actress, often appearing in video games.
But she had one last reunion with her Romeo ex – when she and Whiting appeared together in the 2015 British film Social Suicide, which was based on Romeo and Juliet, albeit in the age of social media.
