Catya Sassoon, 33: She quickly climbed as model and actress
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Catya Sassoon, 33, the model-turned-actress daughter of celebrity hair stylist Vidal Sassoon, died in her sleep Tuesday morning at her home in the Hollywood Hills.
Ms. Sassoon's manager, Hilly Elkins, said Ms. Sassoon complained of feeling "woozy" at a party at a friend's house and went home. When Ms. Sassoon's husband, Joe Myers, tried to awaken her a few hours later, she failed to respond, Elkins said. Results of an autopsy are pending.
Born in New York City, Ms. Sassoon was the first of Beverly and Vidal Sassoon's four children. Growing up in Los Angeles, she lived a fast life.
At 14, she dropped out of Beverly Hills High School in her freshman year and left home to work as a model in Manhattan.
A month shy of turning 16, she married her first husband, Luca Scalisi, the film-school-student son of an Italian movie producer.
"She's wild crazy and stubborn. But then we all are," Beverly Sassoon told People magazine in 1985.
After moving to Manhattan to start her modeling career, Ms. Sassoon signed with the Prestige Agency and moved into a group apartment.
"It was sheer hell living there with 12 girls fighting for one of the two available showers every morning at 6," she told People. "Everyone stole everyone's makeup. I was the youngest. The rest were in their 20s."
When she complained to her father, he moved her into her own penthouse apartment.
The 5-foot-8, 117-pound, auburn-haired Ms. Sassoon quickly became one of the top junior models in New York.
She appeared on the covers of Seventeen, Bride and other magazines. In 1985, Rolling Stone ran a photograph of her, proclaiming, "Catya Sassoon defines the word nubile."
Media accounts referred to Ms. Sassoon's problems with drugs and alcohol.
In 1990, Ms. Sassoon and her mother talked openly about their chemical dependencies — and how they kicked them — in promotional appearances for Beverly's "Fantasies" novel. At the time, Beverly Sassoon told columnist Marilyn Beck that 22-year-old Catya was about to celebrate "a year free from a drug habit that was so tough there were times I felt I was going to lose her."
Ms. Sassoon landed her first film at 15: a small role in "Tuff Turf," starring James Spader and Robert Downey Jr. She appeared in about 20 other films and in many television shows.
In addition to her husband, parents and siblings, Ms. Sassoon is survived by her twin daughters, Mycca and Syke; and son, London.