1968 ‘Romeo and Juliet’ child actors sue Paramount Pictures for child abuse over their brief nude scene

The actors who played Romeo and Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 picture are accusing Paramount Pictures of child abuse over their brief nude scene

When they performed in the Oscar-winning adaptation of William Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy, Leonard Whiting was 16 and Olivia Hussey was 15 years old.

The two actors, who are now in their 70s, contend in a lawsuit filed in Santa Monica last week that a bedroom scene in which buttocks and bare breasts are visible constitutes sexual exploitation by film studio Paramount and that the business was responsible for disseminating nude images of young people.

The suit says Zeffirelli , who died in 2019, cajoled them into performing the scene, telling them without it ‘the picture would fail,’  having originally insisted there would be no actual nudity, with both actors covered by flesh-colored underwear.

‘Defendants were dishonest and secretly filmed the nude or partially nude minor children without their knowledge, in violation of the state and federal laws regulating indecency and exploitation of minors for profit,’ the suit says.

The complaint, which claims damages of hundreds of millions of dollars, says the two performers have suffered mental anguish and emotional distress in the five-and-a-half decades since the film came out, and that both had only limited professional success in its wake.

Both won Golden Globes for their performances.