Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, stars of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet, have filed a lawsuit against Paramount Studios over sexual exploitation and distribution of images of naked adolescent childrendue to the controversial scenes they had to shoot for that production when they were just 15 and 16 respectively.

The lawsuit filed in Santa Monica claims the film’s director, who died in 2019, had previously assured them there would be no nudity in a controversial scene in a bedroom, but once on the film set he convinced them to take off their clothes for those photos.

Franco Zeffirelli had told the protagonists Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting that they would wear a flesh-colored shirt, but then he changed his plans and to convince them he showed them where he would position the cameras and promised not to film their private parts, according to as told to the media of Hollywood Tony Marinozzi, representative of the actors.

However, in the final scene you can see the buttocks of the actor who played Romeo and the breasts of the young Juliet.

Promise not kept

“What they were told and what happened are two different things. They trusted Franco. At 16, as actors, they took his initiative so that he didn’t violate that trust they had. Franco was their friend and frankly , at 16, what they do there are no options. There was no #MeToo”said the representative.

The lawsuit supports it the protagonists have suffered mental and emotional anguish in the 55 years since the premiere of the film and that because of that scene they lost job opportunities.

Before the press, the actors’ lawyer, Solomon Gresen, stressed that “Nude images of minors are illegal and it shouldn’t be displayed.”

“These were very young, naïve kids in the 60s who didn’t understand what was going to hit them. Suddenly, they became famous to a degree they never expected, and what’s more, they were raped in a way they didn’t know how to handle“.

High impact and Oscar awards

It so happens that the film made quite an impact upon its release and was made with four Oscar nominations. He won two: for the sumptuous costumes by Danilo Donati and for the photography by Pasquale De Santis. And it lost for Best Director and Best Picture.

Curiously, in 2018, Olivia Hussey had defended the nude scene in an interview with the site Variety noting that it “was necessary for the film” and had noted Zeffirelli’s “good taste” in the final cuts. However, he had second thoughts and decided – together with Whiting – to sue the producer.

The complaint 55 years after the facts was made possible by the law applied in California which temporarily suspended the terms for allegations of this type.

Italian director Franco Zeffirelli died at the age of 96, on June 15, 2019, in Rome. He was born in Florence. Moreover Romeo and Julietin his work a version of fractionsanother from the opera the Traviata and a film that was very successful in Argentina, Brother sun, sister moon.

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