On December 26, local time, American film actor Sue Lyon died of illness in Los Angeles at the age of 73. She appeared in nearly thirty films and television works during her lifetime, the most notable of which was Kubrick's Lolita, based on Nabokov's novel. At the age of 14, she emerged from more than 800 candidates and won the golden opportunity to play the role of Lolita.
Sue Leon played Lolita in Lolita (1962).
Sue Lyon was born on July 10, 1946 in Davenport, Iowa, the eldest of five children. Her father died when she was less than a year old, and soon after, her mother moved to Los Angeles with the family. Forced by his family's circumstances, Sue Leon entered the society at a young age. By virtue of her outstanding appearance, at the age of twelve, she was already able to play supporting roles in some TV series. In the end, it was her precociousness that gave her the opportunity to star in "Lolita".
Lolita is a novel by Russian-American writer Nabokov published in 1955 and has been controversial since its inception. The novel tells the story of a middle-aged man, Humbert, who is madly in love with his twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, and cannot extricate himself. In the film version of the great director Stanley Kubrick, in order to meet the requirements of the electrical inspection system at that time, he changed Lolita's age from twelve in the original to fourteen or fifteen in the film, in addition, in the entire story order and character arrangement, there are many places that are different from the original novel. Initially, Kubrick hired Nabokov to be his own screenwriter, but the script he submitted was not very satisfactory. Kubrick, known for his extreme attention to detail, made drastic changes to the screenplay, but retained Nabokov's title as a screenwriter and nominated the great writer for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
In June 1962, "Lolita" was officially released in the United States, which quickly attracted a lot of controversy. Some film critics criticized the film for being obscene and prodigious, but the audience did not care about this, and their enthusiasm for watching the film made this work with an investment of only $2 million get nearly $10 million at the box office. Today, "Lolita" has become a recognized literary adaptation classic, on the film rating website "Rotten Tomatoes", it has received up to 93% of the praise of professional film critics, far better than another version shot in 1997 - directed by Adrian Lane, the title of the film is generally translated as "A Tree of Pear Blossoms Pressed Begonias", interestingly, on the "Douban", the score and number of viewers of this "One Tree Pear Blossom Pressed Begonias" are much higher than Kubrick's "Lolita".
Poster of Lolita (1962).
Starring in "Lolita" made the originally unknown Sue Lyon a hit, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Newcomer that year, and the photo of her wearing a bikini, lollipop and wearing a pair of red heart-shaped sunglasses used in the promotion of the film not only was finally selected as the poster of the film, but also made the image of Sue Lyon enter the history of the film, and even affected the fashion tastes of later generations.
After that, Sue Lyon also starred in films such as "Night of the Iguana", "7 Women", "Murder in a Blue World" and so on, but perhaps due to the lack of training in the class, most of her performances lacked highlights and gradually faded out of the film world.