Sue Lyon, ’Nymphet’ In Kubrick’s ‘Lolita’ Adaptation, Dies at 73

Actress Sue Lyon, who was only 14 years old when she portrayed the “nymphet” title character in director Stanley Kubrick’s boundary-pushing 1962 film Lolita, has died at the age of 73, according to a report by The New York Times. Kubrick’s film was a landmark in the history of sex in cinema, though it portrayed no actual sexual activity. Kubrick’s depiction of the lustful obsession of the movie’s adult protagonist, Humbert Humbert, with the underage title character was significantly watered-down from Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel. In the novel—which is considered both a 20th century literary classic and perhaps the most controversial novel of that century—the character of Dolores Haze, known as “Lolita,” is only 12 years old. But Kubrick raised her age to 15—one year older than Lyon at the time—to evade censorship standards. Lyon, a teenage model with only two acting credits—including a brief appearance on the Dennis the Menace TV series—beat out 800 other young actresses for the role of Lolita, including, reportedly, Tuesday Weld and Hayley Mills, two of the era’s biggest child stars. But when the film was released, some critics felt that—despite the fact that she was a 14-year-old playing a 15-year-old—she appeared too womanly for the role of the “nymphet” in Nabokov’s novel. “She looks to be a good 17 years old, possessed of a striking figure and a devilishly haughty teenage air,” New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther wrote in his review of Kubrick’s film. “She is definitely not a ‘nymphet.’” Kubrick himself later bemoaned the censorship codes he grappled with in making the movie, and said that had he realized what he would be up against, he would not have bothered adapting Lolita at all. Though she went on to roles in a 1964 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana, and the 1967 Frank Sinatra vehicle Tony Rome, Lyon would never come close to matching her performance as Lolita in Kubrick’s film. She married five times, including a marriage to Blade Runner screenwriter Hampton Fancher, and another to Cotton Adamson, a convicted murderer, according to the Hollywood Reporter. She later blamed her marriage to Adamson for stalling her career, saying the stigma around it cost her movie offers. Though Lyon’s cause of death has not been released, a close friend told The New York Times that she had been in “declining health” for a lengthy period of time. She reportedly passed away on December 27. Photo By 20th Century Fox / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain