‘Romeo and Juliet’ actors sue Paramount for child abuse in nude scene

Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whitinhg were protagonists of the film “Romeo and Juliet”, directed by Franco Zeffirelli (1968) and a romantic and controversial scene of the couple in a room until today gives something to talk about because of the images showing Whiting’s buttocks and part of Hussey’s bare breasts. The actor couple filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Santa Monica, United States, last Friday (30) accusing Paramount Pictures of sexually exploiting them and distributing nude images of teenagers.

The lawsuit alleges that Zeffirelli (1923-2019) assured the two actors that there would be no nudity in the film and that they would wear skin-colored underwear in the bedroom scene. But, in the final days of filming, the director reportedly begged them to perform nude with body makeup, “or the movie would fail”. At the time, Hussey was 15 and Whiting was 16, and now, 55 years later, they are seeking compensation of more than $500 million.

“What they heard and what happened were two different things,” Tony Marinozzi, the actors’ manager, tells Variety. “They trusted Franco. At 16, as actors, they assumed he wouldn’t violate the trust they had. Franco was their friend, and frankly, at 16, what do they do? There are no options. There was no #MeToo. “

“Pictures of nude minors are illegal and should not be shown. They were innocent children in the 1960s, who had no idea what would happen to them. They suddenly became famous on a level they had never imagined, and they were violated in a way they didn’t know how to deal with,” adds their lawyer, Solomon Gresen. The lawsuit builds in large part on a California law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations for older claims of child sexual abuse.

Paramount has not commented on the case. Before Zeffirelli’s death, Olivia Hussey even praised the nude scenes when talking to Variety herself. “They were needed for the film. And nobody my age had done that before.” Then, she reinforced to the Fox News channel that she did not see a problem with the scene and even said that the nude was only taboo in the United States. “Europeans were used to seeing naked people in movies.”