LOS ANGELES (AP) — The two stars of 1968’s “Romeo and Juliet” sued Paramount Pictures for more than $500 million on Tuesday around a nude scene in the movie shot when they were teens.
Olivia Hussey, then 15 and now 71, and Leonard Whiting, then 16 now 72, submitted the suit in Los Angeles County Excellent Court docket alleging sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud.
Director Franco Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, to begin with explained to the two that they would wear flesh-coloured undergarments in the bed room scene that will come late in the film and was shot on the closing days of filming, the match alleges.
But on the early morning of the shoot, Zeffirelli told Whiting, who performed Romeo, and Hussey, who performed Juliet, that they would have on only human body makeup, when nonetheless assuring them the digital camera would be positioned in a way that would not exhibit nudity, in accordance to the go well with.
But they had been filmed in the nude devoid of their know-how, in violation of California and federal regulations against indecency and the exploitation of youngsters, the fit suggests.
Zeffirelli instructed them they should act in the nude “or the Photograph would fall short” and their professions would be damage, the accommodate stated. The actors “believed they had no option but to act in the nude in system make-up as demanded.”
Whiting’s bare buttocks and Hussey’s bare breasts are briefly shown during the scene.
The movie, and its theme tune, were significant hits at the time, and has been revealed to generations of superior school college students finding out the Shakespeare participate in considering the fact that.
The court docket submitting suggests the Hussey and Whiting have experienced emotional hurt and psychological anguish for decades, and that every single experienced occupations that did not mirror the good results of the motion picture.
It says specified that suffering and the income introduced in by the movie due to the fact its release, the actors are entitled to damages of a lot more than $500 million.
An e mail trying to find comment from associates of Paramount was not promptly returned.
The lawsuit was filed below a California legislation temporarily suspending the statute of limits for baby sex abuse, which has led to a host of new lawsuits and the revival of several other individuals that ended up earlier dismissed.
Hussey defended the scene in a 2018 job interview with Wide variety, which to start with reported the lawsuit, for the film’s 50th anniversary.
“Nobody my age experienced finished that just before,” she reported, incorporating that Zeffirelli shot it tastefully. “It was essential for the movie.”
The Connected Push does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come ahead publicly, as Hussey and Whiting have.
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Abide by AP Leisure Author Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton
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