A 55-year-old film, one shown to millions of high school students in the five-plus decades since its release, is the subject of a new lawsuit potentially worth half a billion dollars.
When then-15-year-old Olivia Hussey and then-16-year-old Leonard Whiting signed on to play the lead roles in director Franco Zeffirelli’s retelling of the Shakespeare classic “Romeo and Juliet,” the pair say they had no idea that they’d be required to shoot a nude scene.
Hussey and Whiting say they believed they would be wearing flesh-colored undergarments during the scene in Juliet’s bedroom. But when it came time to film the scene during the final days of the shoot, they were only clad in body makeup.
Even then, they say that Zeffirelli assured them that the cameras would be positioned with their modesty in mind. That also proved to be untrue, and both actors’ nudity is on display in the final cut of the film, released in 1968.
Now 71 and 72 years old, respectively, Hussey and Whiting have filed suit against Paramount Pictures, alleging that being filmed nude without their knowledge in their teenage years is a violation of both California and federal statutes against indecency and the exploitation of children.
Both actors allege Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, told them that without the pair appearing nude in the bedroom scene, “the Picture would fail,” and that they “believed they had no choice but to act in the nude in body makeup as demand.”
As recently as 2018, Hussey had defended the scene, telling Variety in an interview celebrating the film’s 50th anniversary, “Nobody my age had done that before… It was needed for the film.”
Now though the actress had joined with her former costar to allege they have dealt with mental anguish and emotional damage in the decades since the film’s release.
That trauma combined with the many millions of dollars the film has made in the last 55 years has informed their estimation of damage compensation of over $500 million, the suit says.
The suit was filed Tuesday thanks to a temporary suspension of the statute of limitations on child sex abuse lawsuits in California.
Paramount Pictures representatives have yet to comment on the suit.
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