Romeo and Juliet legendary stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey have dropped a bomb lawsuit against Paramount’s photos. The actor now in the 70s is denounced sexual exploitation studios after being misunderstood in filming nude scenes as a teenager.
The lawsuit, filed December 30th in Santa Monica, comes with several serious allegations, including exploitation, sexual harassment, fraud and the distribution of nude images of minors. Whiting was 16 years old, and Hussey was 15 years old while filming. The two now seek more than $500 million in damages, claiming they have suffered “mental distress” ever since and have missed employment opportunities. “Paramount was obligated to protect minor child employees from children and sexual exploitation,” the lawsuit states.
At the heart of the controversy is the intimate bedroom scenes of the film. The actors claim that Zeffirelli assured them that he would wear flesh-colored underwear that was not shown nude. However, on the last day of filming, the director was said to have put pressure on them to play nude, warning that otherwise it would be the film. They also claim that Zeffirelli filmed them naked without their knowledge and got a glimpse of Hussey’s breasts and whiting’s butt section in the final cut.
“What they were told and what happened was two different things,” Tony Marinozzi, the actor’s business manager, said in various interviews. “They trusted Franco. At the age of 16, as an actor, they took his lead to avoid violating his trust. Franco is their friend, frankly at 16, What do they do? There’s no choice. There was no #MeToo.”
The lawsuit was filed under California law that temporarily suspends the law on restricting child sexual abuse claims. Solomon Gresen, the actor’s lawyer, told Variety: These were very young and naive kids from the 60s who didn’t understand what was going on over them. Suddenly, they became famous at levels they didn’t expect, and they were violated in ways they didn’t know how to deal with it. ”
Ironically, Hussey previously defended the scene in an interview with the 2018 Fox News, calling it “it was very classy” and “it wasn’t that big of a deal.” This contradiction highlights the central argument of the lawsuit. The actors as minors have been manipulated for years to downplay their discomfort.
Romeo and Juliet were critical and commercial victories, winning four Oscar nominations, making Whiting and Hussy immortal as decisive star-crossed lovers. Hussey stars in Black Christmas and Death on the Nile, while Whiting appears in the Royal Hunt Sun. The pair were reunited with a social suicide in 2015. However, the shadows of Zeffirelli’s film remain.
The lawsuit rekindles conversations about the consent, power dynamics and exploitation of young actors in previous Metto Hollywood. Romeo and Juliet remain gems in the film, but their legacy now carries a troublesome asterisk. As Marinozzi briefly stated, “nude images of minors are illegal and should not be displayed.” Fifty years later, Whiting and Hussy finally demanded their calculations.
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