Sue Lyon ✝

Suellyn Lyon (July 10, 1946 – December 26, 2019) was an American actress. She joined the entertainment industry as a model at the age of 13, and later rose to prominence and won a Golden Globe for playing the title role in the film Lolita (1962). Her other film appearances included The Night of the Iguana (1964), 7 Women (1966), Tony Rome (1967), and Evel Knievel (1971). Suellyn Lyon was born on July 10, 1946, in Davenport, Iowa. She was the youngest of five children, and her father died before her first birthday. Soon after, her mother, Sue Karr Lyon, moved the family to Dallas, then to Los Angeles. When she was 14 years old, she was cast in the role of Dolores "Lolita" Haze in Stanley Kubrick's film Lolita (1962), starring with James Mason, then aged 53. Nabokov, the book's author, described her as the "perfect nymphet". She was chosen for the role partly because the film makers had to alter the age of the character to an older adolescent rather than the 12-year-old child Lolita in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. Although Kubrick's film altered the story so as not to be in violation of the Hollywood Production Code, it was still one of the most controversial films of the day.