It's been more than 75 years since Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard hit theaters, putting a mirror up on Hollywood's treatment of its older stars.
The film was a box office and critical smash, even receiving nominations for 11 Academy Awards and winning three. It solidified the star power of Best Actor nominee William Holden and led to a career resurgence for Best Actress nominee Gloria Swanson.
However, another one of the stars to come from the landmark film was Nancy Olson, who received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for playing script reader Betty Schaefer.
At 97 years old now, Nancy is one of the oldest surviving Oscar nominees, and one of the only stars from Hollywood's studio system who is still living. Sunset Boulevard was only Nancy's second feature film, and kicked off a prolific career in front of the camera that lasted decades.
© Getty ImagesNancy Olson's career
The immediate aftermath of the success of Sunset Boulevard was studios' decisions to pair Nancy with her co-star and onscreen love interest William Holden.
The pair appeared together in three more films over the course of the following year, those being Union Station, Force of Arms and Submarine Command, although none made a significant impact.
© Getty ImagesIn 1961, she starred with Fred MacMurray in Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor, which was a box office success and spawned the sequel Son of Flubber in 1963, the first Disney sequel and the birth of the Flubber franchise, that was revived in 1997 with Robin Williams. Nancy made a cameo appearance in the latter as well.
She continued to actively appear in film and on TV throughout the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, although a majority of her appearances were bit parts and supporting turns. The most notable of those was 1974's Airport 1975, and a leading role in the short-lived 1984 soap Paper Dolls (now considered a cult classic).
© Getty ImagesNancy effectively retired from acting in the 1980s, although made brief appearances on screen a few times after, including Flubber, a 2010 episode of Big Love, and 2014's Dumbbells, her last onscreen credit to date.
© Getty ImagesNancy Olson's personal life
In 1950, the same year Sunset Boulevard was released, Nancy married lyricist and librettist Alan Jay Lerner. They welcomed daughters Liza, now 74, and Jennifer, now 72, while together, divorcing in 1957.
In 1962, she married Capitol Records exec Alan W. Livingston, welcoming a son together named Christopher (pictured here), now 61. They remained together until Alan's death in 2009.
© Getty ImagesStepping away
In her most recent interview, back in August of 2025, Nancy opened up about her decision to leave Hollywood behind, prompted by the darker side of the industry she'd witnessed, ironically during the making of and after Sunset Boulevard.
"I said to myself, 'I do not want to be a movie star, a commodity to sell,'" she told People. "I will be thrown away someday just as Gloria Swanson was, and so was Marilyn Monroe, who committed suicide at the age of 36."
"What I decided at the end of that movie was, 'I don't think I want to be a movie star. I want family. I want children. I want a life, and this is not a life.'"
