Olivia Hussey and Leonard Withing, the British actors who as teenagers were the stars of Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, are suing Paramount over a famous nude scene in the bedroom .
Now grandparents and over 70, the two actors turned to the Superior Court of Santa Monica. They claim they were sexually exploited when they were underage . The lawsuit is possible thanks to a California law that temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for sex crimes.
Olivia and Leonard were 15 and 16 at the time of filming, asking for half a billion dollars in damages.
Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, released in 1968, was a huge success with the public. He was nominated for four Oscars, including best director and best film, he won two for the cinematography of Pasqualino De Santis and the costumes of Danilo Donati.
Olivia and Leonard won the Golden Globe instead, but after that film their film career never took off .
The two claim that Zeffirelli had promised that there would be no nudity in the film and that the two boys would wear flesh-colored underwear in the bedroom scene. On the day of shooting, however , the director would have begged them to undress, "otherwise the film would have been a fiasco and our careers would have been ruined" .
The camera, Zeffirelli said again according to their testimony, would have been positioned in such a way as not to show nudity, but in the end you can clearly see her breasts and his buttocks .
Actors are calling on Paramount to take responsibility for abuse, sexual harassment and fraud . The Hollywood studio, they claim, allegedly exploited them sexually by distributing naked images of two teenagers.
"What they were told and what really happened were two different things," said an agent of the two actors, Tony Marinozzi. « They trusted Franco, whom they consider a friend and were sure that he would not violate their trust. But at 16 what could they do? They had no choice. And there was no #MeToo ».
For Solomon Gresen, the couple's lawyer, " nude images of minors are against the law and should not be shown ".
But some interviews released some time ago could jeopardize the lawsuit. Hussey in 2018 spoke of the scene shot " with refinement " and claimed: "No one had ever done it before". Also admitting, interviewed by Fox, that " Leonard wasn't shy at all and I forgot in the middle of filming that I had nothing on ".
(Unioneonline/L)