‘Romeo and Juliet’ Stars Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting Sue Paramount for Sexual Harassment More Than 50 Years After 1968 Film: Everything to Know
usmagazine.comThe lead actors of the 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet have filed a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures for sexual harassment over the movie’s nude scene.The suit was filed by the stars of the film, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, on Friday, December 30, accusing the studio of “sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud,” according to the Associated Press.
The costars claimed that director Franco Zeffirelli — who died in 2019 — told both actors that the film would not have any nudity and for the bedroom scene the twosome would wear flesh-colored undergarments.The suit alleges that Zeffirelli later suggested that the performers filmed the scene naked or the movie “would fail.” At the time of the production, Hussey was 15 years old and Whiting was 16.“What they were told and what went on were two different things,” the actors’ business manager Tony Marinozzi told Variety on Tuesday, January 3. “They trusted Franco.
At 16, as actors, they took his lead that he would not violate that trust they had. Franco was their friend, and frankly, at 16, what do they do?
There are no options. There was no #MeToo.”The critically acclaimed romantic drama was a box-office success upon its 1968 release, and Hussey previously defended the film’s controversial nude scene.
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