Vidal Sassoon's daughter dies after New Year party

Actress and model Catya Sassoon, the daughter of British hairstylist Vidal Sassoon, died in her sleep after attending a New Year’s party at a friend’s house in Los Angeles. She was 33.

’’She complained of feeling woozy and they left the party and went home,’’ said her manager, Hilly Elkins.

When her husband, Joe Myers, checked on her a few hours later, he discovered she wasn’t breathing, said Elkins. The coroner’s office said autopsy results were pending.

Elkins said she suffered from high blood pressure.

Sassoon had lived a flamboyant lifestyle in her younger years, and later acknowledged severe drug and alcohol problems.

’’There were times I felt I was going to lose her,’’ her mother, Beverly Sassoon, once said.

Catya Sassoon had dropped out of Beverly Hills High School at 14 to pursue a modelling career in New York. She signed with the Prestige Agency, which moved her into a group apartment with a dozen other models.

’’It was sheer hell living there with 12 girls fighting for one of the two available showers every morning at six,’’ she said. ‘‘Everyone stole everyone’s make-up.’’

Sassoon later appeared on the covers of Seventeen, Bride and other magazines. In 1985, Rolling Stone declared, ‘‘Catya Sassoon defines the word nubile.’’

She made her film debut that year, appearing opposite James Spader and Robert Downey Jr in the film Tuff Turf.

She was the oldest daughter of Vidal and Beverly Sassoon.