tThe two stars of the 1968 movie “Romeo and Juliet” sued Paramount Pictures for more than $500 million on Tuesday over a nude scene in the movie shot when they were teenagers.
Olivia Hussey, then 15 and now 71, and Leonard Whiting, then 16 and now 72, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court alleging sexual assault, sexual harassment and fraud.
Director Franco Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, initially told the two they would wear flesh-colored underwear in a bedroom scene that comes late in the movie and was shot in 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 only associate with body make-up, while still assuring them that the camera would be positioned in a way that did not 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, according to the lawsuit.
The suit said Zeffirelli told them they had to act nude “otherwise the picture would fail” and their careers would suffer. The actors “thought they had no choice but to act naked in body makeup as required”.
Whiting’s bare buttocks and Hussey’s bare breast are briefly visible 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.
The lawsuit says Hussey and Whiting suffered emotional damage and mental anguish for decades, and that they each had careers that did not reflect the success of the film.
It 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.
An email seeking comment from Paramount representatives was not immediately returned.
The suit was brought under a California statute that temporarily suspends the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse, prompting a slew of new lawsuits and the revival of several other previously dismissed cases.
Hussey defended the scene in a 2018 interview with Variety, which first reported the lawsuit, on the occasion of the film’s 50th anniversary.
“Nobody my age has done that before,” she said, adding that Zeffirelli shot it with flair. “It was essential to the movie.”
The Associated Press usually does not name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Hussey and Whiting did.
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