The two stars of Franco Zeffirelli’s acclaimed 1968 movie version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet are suing Paramount over the film’s nude scene, claiming it constitutes child sexual exploitation since they were both minors during the production.
They also accuse Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, of tricking them into disrobing for the camera by promising that the finished film would not contain nudity.
Actors Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting have filed a joint lawsuit in California against Paramount, accusing the studio of sexually exploiting them and distributing nude images of adolescent children, according to a Variety report.
The actors — who were 15 and 16, respectively, during the filming — claim to have suffered mental anguish and emotional distress in the more than five decades since the movie’s release and are seeking damages “believed to be in excess of $500 million.”
Romeo and Juliet features a bedroom scene during which viewers can see Hussey’s bare breasts and Whiting’s buttocks.
“Nude images of minors are unlawful and shouldn’t be exhibited,” the actors’ attorney, Solomon Gresen, said in an interview with Variety. “These were very young naive children in the ’60s who had no understanding of what was about to hit them. All of a sudden they were famous at a level they never expected, and in addition they were violated in a way they didn’t know how to deal with.”
As summarized by the Associated Press, the suit alleges “sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and fraud”:
Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, initially told the two that they would wear flesh-colored undergarments in the bedroom scene that comes late in the movie and was shot on the final days of filming, the suit alleges.
But on the morning of the shoot, Zeffirelli told Whiting, who played Romeo, and Hussey, who played Juliet, that they would wear only body makeup, while still assuring them the camera would be positioned in a way that would not show nudity, according to the suit.
Yet they were filmed in the nude without their knowledge, in violation of California and federal laws against indecency and the exploitation of children, the suit says.
Zeffirelli told them they must act in the nude “or the Picture would fail” and their careers would be hurt, the suit said. The actors “believed they had no choice but to act in the nude in body makeup as demanded.”
The lawsuit is taking advantage of a temporary California law known as Assembly Bill 218, which temporarily set aside the statute of limitations for child sexual assault accusations. The law, which was signed in 2019, opened a three-year window for victims and expired at the end of 2022.
The legislation has opened the door to a number of high profile lawsuits, including one against Aerosmith rocker Steven Tyler and another against actor-director Warren Beatty.
The Romeo and Juliet lawsuit is perplexing because the two stars, who are now in their 70s, have continued promoting the movie in the decades since its release, including during the TCM Classic Film Festival in 2018.
In a 2018 Variety interview tied to the festival screening, Hussey even defended the nude scene.
“Nobody my age had done that before,” she said, adding that Zeffirelli shot it tastefully. “It was needed for the film.”
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