Sue Lyon, Stanley Kubrick‘s Lolita who died at 73, was the fourth-youngest actor to win a Golden Globe. Lyon was 14 years old when she won in 1963 as Most Promising Newcomer – Female, a Golden Globe category that was discontinued in 1983.film version of Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel about a middle-aged man, pedophile Humbert Humbert,  obsessed with 12-year-old Dolores ‘Dolly’ Haze, the daughter of his landlady.

normal’>Lolita until her retirement in 1980, she was mostly known and remembered for that one role. Nabokov, Lolita‘s author who adapted his novel to the screen, approved of her performance and called her ‘the perfect nymphet’, the same sobriquet he used for the character he has written. Critics disagreed, seeing her as more mature.

James Mason, playing Humbert, a visiting middle-aged British professor, who marries the widowed mother of the teen-aged Lolita, played by Shelley Winters. Peter Sellers was a mysterious chameleon-like character, who competes for Lolita’s favors. The movie was not embraced by critics or awards. The Academy, BAFTA, DGA, and Venice doled out just one nomination each. But the HFPA, ahead of the times, gave Lolita four more nominations in addition to Lyon’s award, recognizing the director and the three leading actors, Winters, Mason and Sellers.

With Stanley Kubrick on the set of Lolita.

sunset boulevard/corbis/getty images

The Loretta Young Show caught director Kubrick’s eye. He urged her to audition for Lolita, saying, ‘She has a great natural ability… She’s a one-in-a-million find.’ On her part, Lyon would say later that she just ‘ went as a lark.’

John Huston (The Night of the Iguana, 1964, five Golden Globe nominations) and John Ford (Richard Burton,  “You’re as dangerous as you are young and lovely,” he tells her.

Seven Women she played a young missionary in 1935 rural China, caught between the attention of the jealous mission’s matron, Margaret Leighton, and the youngster’s attraction to a visiting American atheist doctor. Lyon’s performances stood out, but these movies did not do well, and her career declined.

The Flim-Flam Man (1966), opposite con men George C. Scott and Michael Sarrazin, co-starred with private eye Frank Sinatra in the neo-noir Tony Rome (1967) and was the long-suffering wife of George Hamilton in the biopic of the popular stunt man daredevil Evel Knievel (1971). Her career declined to international low budget thrillers and some guest appearances on TV shows. After completing a 1980 horror movie, Alligator, she called it quits.

mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black’> Her next marriage was even more controversial. Lyon was living in Denver with her toddler, and working as a cocktail waitress in a night club, when she met, through mutual friends, a convict doing time for second-degree murder and robbery, Gary ‘Cotton’ Adamson. Sue married  Cotton and began working for prison reform and conjugal rights. A year later Adamson broke out and committed another robbery. Lyon divorced him, saying: “I’ve been told by people in the movie business, specifically producers and film distributors, that I won’t get a job because I’m married to Cotton.”

Lolita was re-made in 1997, she told Reuters: ‘I am appalled they should revive the film that caused my destruction as a person.’