Sassoon attended a friend's New Year's party and died early the next morning at her home in the Hollywood Hills. "She complained of feeling woozy, and they [Sassoon and her husband Joe Myers] left the party and went home," said Hilly Elkins, her manager.

Myers discovered Sassoon’s body, when he went to check in on her hours later, according to Elkins. Autopsy results are pending. Elkins said Sassoon suffered from high blood pressure.

Sassoon was born the first of four children in New York and grew up in Beverly Hills. She dropped out of Beverly Hills High School at age 14 and went back to New York to start a career as a model.

Shortly before her 16th birthday Sassoon married her first husband Luca Scalasi, a then-USC film student and the son of an Italian movie producer.

With her five-foot-8-inches, 117-pound frame, Sassoon became a popular teen model gracing the covers of Seventeen, Bride as well as other magazines.

Sassoon, about whom Rolling Stone magazine once wrote she "defines the word nubile," was known to live on the fast track in her younger years. She later spoke openly about her drug and alcohol addictions.

Sassoon made her big-screen debut at 15 in "Tuff Turf," opposite James Spader and Robert Downey Jr. Her other film credits include "Bloodfist IV: Die Trying," "Modern Girls" and "Hollywood Kids."

Sassoon is survived by her parents, three siblings, her husband and their three children.