The case is unusual: two actors in their seventies are taking legal action in California against Paramout for alleged sexual exploitation.

It must be said that the two plaintiffs, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, base their complaint on a case which took place… in 1968. And which concerns one of the great names of Italian cinema, the late Franco Zeffirelli, and by the way of a no less famous film:

Romeo and Juliet

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The feature film had been nominated for four Oscars, and had won two.

However, a scene in a bedroom, where the two young actors appeared buttocks and bare breasts, had raised a controversy.

Variety

, which reports the complaint, explains that the two teenage actors claim to have been pressured by the production and the director to shoot naked during this scene, and this despite promises which assured them that he would not there would be no nudity in the film.

According to them, the producers are guilty of “having been dishonest and of having secretly filmed naked or partially naked minors without their consent, in violation of the laws (…) regulating indecency and the sexual exploitation of minors.

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Trust betrayed

Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting indeed claim in their complaint that they had been promised that they would shoot in flesh-colored underwear for the bedroom scene.

However, shortly before the filming of the famous sequence, Franco Zeffirelli allegedly alleged that the film would flop if they didn't actually shoot naked.

To reassure the two teenagers, he even told them where the camera was, placed so that no nudity was filmed.

But that was not the case.

They would have been filmed without their knowledge.

Today, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting argue that this scene had a deleterious double effect on them.

First of all, by causing them “mental anguish” and “emotional distress” since the filming, ie 55 years.

And then, on their acting career.

“They trusted Franco.

At 16, as actors, they believed he wouldn't violate that trust that they had.

Franco was their friend, and frankly, at 16, what could they do?

There was no choice.

There was no #MeToo,” said Tony Marinozzi, who manages the careers of the two actors.

However, in 2018, still in

Variety

, Olivia Hussey had defended this nude scene, "which was necessary for the film".

Today, the two actors claim damages “estimated at more than 500 million dollars”.

Movie theater

Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian director of "Romeo and Juliet", is dead

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