Romeo and Juliet told going bare for the Bard was not abuse

A child abuse lawsuit over a nude scene filed by ­actors who played star-crossed ­lovers in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 Romeo and Juliet will be thrown out.

Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey star in the 1968 films Romeo & Juliet.

A child abuse lawsuit over a nude scene filed by ­actors who played star-crossed ­lovers in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 Romeo & Juliet will be thrown out.

Olivia Hussey was 15 and ­Leonard Whiting 16 when they starred in the Oscar-winning film of William Shakespeare’s tragedy from Hollywood studio Paramount Pictures.

The film featured a brief bedroom scene in which Whiting’s buttocks and Hussey’s breasts were visible. The actors – now in their 70s – claimed in a lawsuit filed in December that the movie amounted to sexual exploitation.

But a judge on Thursday ­granted Paramount’s motion to throw out the suit, rejecting the ­argument the scene amounted to “child pornography” and noting the award-winning film was covered by freedom-of-speech protections.

“Plaintiffs have not put forth any authority showing the film here can be deemed to be sufficiently sexually suggestive as a matter of law to be held to be conclusively illegal,” wrote judge ­Alison Mackenzie.

The statute of limitations had also expired, she ruled.

Variety reported that during a 2018 interview with Hussey, she had defended the nude scene, which she insisted Zeffirelli had done tastefully. “It was needed for the film,” she told the outlet.

But the suit filed in December said Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, ­cajoled the teenage pair into performing the scene, telling them without it “the picture would fail”. It alleged the director had originally insisted there would be no actual nudity, with both actors covered by flesh-coloured 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 said.

The complaint, which claimed damages of hundreds of millions of dollars, said the actors suffered mental anguish and emotional ­distress.

AFP