Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, who played the titular roles in 1968’s “Romeo and Juliet,” have sued Paramount Pictures for more than $500 million over a nude scene in the film shot when they were teenagers, new court documents show.
Hussey, then 15 and now 71, and Whiting, then 16 now 72, filed the suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court Friday alleging sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud after the nude scene was included in the film, despite alleged reassurance from Director Franco Zeffirelli nudity would not be shown.
Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, allegedly told the two young actors that they would wear flesh-colored undergarments in the bedroom scene and would use camera angles to obscure the nudity, the suit alleges.
According to the suit, the scene was shot on the final days of filming and ignored those previous assurances.
FILE – Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, who are playing the title roles in Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet,” place flowers on the “Tomba di Giulietta,” or the Tomb of Juliet, in Verona, northern Italy, on Oct. 22, 1968.
(AP Photo/File)
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Whiting, who played Romeo, and Hussey, who played Juliet, said they were filmed in the nude without their knowledge, in violation of California and federal laws against indecency and the exploitation of children, the suit says.
The two stars said Zeffirelli told them they must act in the nude “or the Picture would fail,” the suit said. He also suggested their careers would be hurt, it added. So, the actors “believed they had no choice but to act in the nude in body makeup as demanded,” the suit said.
The scene in question, which comes near the end of the film, briefly showed Whiting’s bare buttocks and Hussey’s bare breasts.
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“What they were told and what went on were two…
