'Romeo & Juliet' movie stars file second lawsuit over 1968 nude scene while minors

The stars of the 1968 movie "Romeo & Juliet" have filed a new lawsuit against Paramount Pictures and Criterion for the digital re-release of their film, which includes brief nudity of the titular actors as minors.

Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting filed a complaint with the Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday alleging that the rerelease "had been digitally enhanced" and "depicted their private areas in such high detail that the gratuitous display was lewd and lascivious and demeaning to them," according to the lawsuit obtained by USA TODAY.

Hussey, who played Juliet at age 15 and is now 72, and Whiting, who played Romeo at 16 and is now 73, allege in the complaint that nothing in their contracts permitted Paramount, then B.H.E. Productions, Ltd., to "recreate, republish, or redistribute photographs" of their performance "in any other medium or format than 35 mm analogue."

The actors are asking the courts to bar the defendants from distributing the film digitally with the nude scene and seeking compensation for "emotional distress, embarrassment, humiliation, and mental anguish."

USA TODAY has reached out to reps for Paramount and Criterion.

The actors created a joint website detailing the allegations of their latest lawsuit. In a joint statement on their website and shared to USA TODAY via their rep Tony Marinozzi, Hussey and Whiting claim they extended an olive branch to Paramount "in hopes that they would settle this legal matter, but unfortunately, it appears that they do not want to take responsibility for their participation in the digital enhancement, production and distribution of the 1968 film 'Romeo and Juliet' nor for the photos included in that reproduction that were fraudulently and surreptitiously taken of the most private areas of our nude bodies on the set and thereafter revealed and published in the 1968 film as well as on the digital reproduction of that film in 2023 without our permission for either work.

"The facts, evidence, and law are all crystal clear in this matter … and we believe that over half a century of mental incarceration for this traumatic event has been quite enough," they concluded.

Their attorneys added in a statement, "They had, for years, tolerated the use of those purloined photos in the copies of the original analog film published and distributed by Paramount, but including their naked pictures in the digital remastering of the film itself rendered those photographs lewd and lascivious and far exceeded any tolerance they had previously shown to Paramount and (director) Franco Zeffirelli. Neither had ever consented to the public display of those photographs for any reason."

In May, a Los Angeles County judge dismissed their first lawsuit over the film's nude scene, finding that their depiction could not be considered child pornography and they filed their claim too late to be considered under the California Child Victims Act, which had a lookback window that ended in December 2022.

Superior Court Judge Alison Mackenzie determined that the scene was protected by the First Amendment, finding that the actors "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."

In her written decision, she also found that the suit didn't fall within the bounds of a California law that temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse, and that a February re-release of the film did not change that.

'Romeo and Juliet' starsOlivia Hussey, Leonard Whiting's nude scene lawsuit dismissed by judge

Zeffirelli, who died in 2019 at age 96, initially told the two that they would wear flesh-colored undergarments in the bedroom scene that comes late in the movie and was shot on the final days of filming, the suit alleged.

But on the morning of the shoot, Zeffirelli told Whiting and Hussey that they would wear only body makeup, while still assuring them the camera would be positioned in a way that would not show nudity, according to the suit.

Despite those assurances, they were filmed in the nude without their knowledge, in violation of California and federal laws against indecency and the exploitation of children, the suit alleged.

Those claims are reiterated in the latest lawsuit.

Contributing: Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press

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