The two top stars of the 1968 hit movie Romeo and Juliet have now sued Paramount Pictures for more than $500 million more than 5 decades later over the nude scene in the film they shot when the duo was teens.
Olivia Hussey, 71 who was then 15, and Leonard Whiting, 72 who was then 16 filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior court with the charges of sexual abuse, harassment, and fraud against the studio.
Director Franco 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.
However, in the morning of the scene shot, Zeffirelli told Whiting and Hussey who were playing the respective roles of Romeo and Juliet that they would be wearing body makeup only while assuring them that the camera will be positioned in a way that the nudity will not be presented as per what the suit says.
Yet they were filmed in the nude without their knowledge, in violation of California and federal laws against indecency and the exploitation of children, their legal suit added further.
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.”
In the scene that has now led to the controversy, Whiting’s bare buttocks and Hussey’s bare breasts are briefly shown. The film, and its theme song, were major hits at the time and have been shown to generations of high school students studying the Shakespeare play.
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The filing reads that Hussey and Whiting have suffered emotional damage and mental anguish for decades now, besides mentioning the duo had careers that didn’t reflect the movie’s success.
Owing to the compensation in money the file further says that with the revenue brought in by the film since its release, the actors are entitled to damages of more than $500 million. While several news wires tried to seek a response from the office bearers of Paramount but no response has been given by them as of yet.
The case has been registered under the California law that temporarily suspends the statute of limitation for child sex abuse, which has triggered a host of new lawsuits being filed and the revival of many other cases that was previously damaged.
However, it is pertinent to mention that Hussey defended the scene in a 2018 interview with a major US-based media house, which first reported the lawsuit, for the film’s 50th anniversary. “Nobody my age had done that before,” she said, adding that Zeffirelli shot it tastefully. “It was needed for the film.”