Sue Lyon
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Sue Lyon (born July 10, 1946 in Davenport, Iowa) is a former American actress.
Sue Lyon was only thirteen years of age when she won the controversial role of Dolores Haze, the sexually charged adolescent and the object of an older man's obsessions in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film, Lolita. From the Vladimir Nabokov novel of the same name, Kubrick's Lolita, although a toned-down version of the story, was nonetheless one of the most talked about films of its day. Only sixteen when the film premiered, Sue Lyon became an instant celebrity and won a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer – Female.
Lyon was then cast in a similar role in John Huston's Night of the Iguana (1964), competing for the affections of Richard Burton's defrocked alcoholic preacher against the likes of Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner. Again, controversey surrounded her because of a provocative scene in the film in which Lyon is shown emerging from the water. In 1965, she played an innocent in director John Ford's last feature film, 7 Women.
Divorced in 1965 after a brief marriage, Sue Lyon married a second time in 1970 to Roland Harrison, an African-American photographer. Racism of the day caused the couple problems and they left the United States for a time to live in Spain. The marriage soon ended in divorce and she returned to the U.S. where before long she met, married, and divorced her third husband, all while he was in the Colorado state penitentiary, convicted of murder.
Sue Lyon's stardom deteriorated rapidly and by the 1970s she was relegated to mainly secondary roles but continued to work in film and television until 1980. Her often tumultuous life led to a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder for which she received treatment.