Hussey appeared in a
West End production of
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, playing Jenny opposite
Vanessa Redgrave. Italian film director
Franco Zeffirelli noticed her performance because "she was the only choice mature enough with experience and natural beauty to play
Juliet while still looking 14." She was chosen out of 500 actresses to star in
Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet film, opposite 16-year-old
Leonard Whiting's Romeo. Derek Smith of
Slant said Hussey's performance "captures the passion and yearning of love-struck teens in a very contemporary manner".
Peter Bradshaw of
The Guardian agreed, and said Hussey "has an otherworldly purity".
Roger Ebert also gave her and Whiting high praise. She won a special
David di Donatello Award and the
Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress in 1969. After the success of
Romeo and Juliet, Hollywood producer
Hal B. Wallis offered her the title role in
Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) and the co-starring role with
John Wayne in
True Grit (1969). In her 2018 memoir, Hussey recalled that she had "mumbled something about being interested in
Anne of the Thousand Days" but that she "couldn't see herself with Wayne", concluding that this "adolescent and opinionated" remark ended her professional relationship with Wallis, who immediately withdrew his offer. In 1971, Hussey appeared in the British drama
All the Right Noises, followed by
The Summertime Killer (1972), In 1974, Hussey played the lead role of
Jess Bradford in the Canadian horror film
Black Christmas (1974), which became influential as a forerunner of the
slasher film genre of horror films. She played
Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the 1977 television production of
Jesus of Nazareth (her second work for director
Zeffirelli). In 1978, she played Rosalie Otterbourne in
Death on the Nile with
Peter Ustinov,
(1982)She starred as Marit in the Japanese film Virus (1980), and played Rebecca of York in the 1982 remake of Ivanhoe (1982); the same year, she had a lead role in the Australian horror film Turkey Shoot (1982). In 1987, Hussey, along with several well-known actors, made a cameo appearance in a clip for the Michael Jackson video "Liberian Girl". She was next offered the role of Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction''. When she read the screenplay and came across the rabbit in the boiling pot sequence, she was so disturbed that she quickly turned the role down. In 1990, Hussey played
Norma Bates, the mother of
Norman Bates, in
Psycho IV: The Beginning, a prequel to
Alfred Hitchcock's
Psycho (1960), and appeared in the miniseries
It, an adaptation of the
Stephen King novel. These two roles along with
Black Christmas earned her the label of
scream queen. Hussey played the lead in
Mother Teresa of Calcutta (2003), a biographical film about
Mother Teresa, for which she was presented with a Character & Morality in Entertainment Award on 12 May 2007 in Hollywood. Hussey later reunited with Whiting as on-screen partners in the film
Social Suicide (2015), the only film that they both appeared in since
Romeo and Juliet. In the project, Hussey's daughter, actress
India Eisley, played their fictional daughter, Julia Coulson. Hussey also worked as a
voice actress, and was nominated for "Outstanding Individual Achievement for Voice Acting by a Female Performer in an Animated Television Production" at the
Annie Awards for her work in the
DC Animated Universe as
Talia al Ghul. She voiced the character of
Kasan Moor in the
PC/
Nintendo 64 game,
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (1998) and was also in the
massively multiplayer online role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011) as Jedi Master Yuon Par. She also lent her voice to
Star Wars: Force Commander in 2000. Hussey was slated to reprise her role as Jess Bradford in the
Black Christmas fan film ''It's Me, Billy: Chapter 2'', but withdrew from the project in November 2023 for health reasons. She was replaced with Lisa Kovack. == Personal life ==