Romeo and Juliet children sued for £400m over nude scene | Movies | entertainment

The captain in the hit movie is doing the action on a nude scene in the movie that was shot when they were both teenagers. Olivia Hussey, who played Juliet when she was 15 and is now 71, and Leonard Whiting, who was 16 when he played Romeo and is now 72, filed the lawsuit earlier this week in court. Upper Los Angeles County alleging sexual assault, sexual harassment and fraud.

Previously, Hussey defended the scene in a 2018 interview with Variety, marking the film’s 50th anniversary.

“Nobody my age has ever done that before,” she said, adding that the director portrayed her with flair.

“It was essential to the movie.”

But the new lawsuit was brought under a California law that temporarily suspends the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse, prompting a slew of new lawsuits and the revival of several others that were previously dismissed.

And in the legal papers, the two actors claim that the film’s director Franco Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, initially told them they would wear flesh-colored underwear in a bedroom scene that appears late in the film and was shot in the final days of the film. take photo.

But on the morning of the shoot, Zeffirelli allegedly told the two young protagonists that they would only be associated with body make-up, while still assuring them that the camera would be positioned in such a way as not to show nudity, according to the suit.

However, they were photographed naked without their knowledge, in violation of California and federal laws against obscenity and child exploitation, the suit alleges.

The suit says Zeffirelli told them they had to act nude “or the picture would fail” and their careers would suffer.

The actors “thought they had no choice but to act in nude body makeup as required”.

Mr. Whiting’s bare buttocks and Ms. Hussein’s bare breasts are shown briefly during the scene.

The film and its theme song were a huge hit at the time and have been played to generations of high school students studying Shakespeare’s play ever since.

Court papers claim that Mr. Hussey and Mrs. Whiting have suffered psychological damage and mental anguish for decades, and that they each had careers that do not reflect the success of the film.

The suit further says that given the suffering and revenue the film has brought in since its release, the actors are entitled to more than $500 million in damages.

Paramount Pictures has not yet responded to the lawsuit.



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