Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting are shown in a clip from Romeo & Juliet, Paramount Pictures, 1968. (screengrab via YouTube)
The actors who starred in the acclaimed 1968 film version of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” have lost their lawsuit over a nude scene for a second time.
Actors Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting sued Paramount Pictures twice for illegally using nude images of them in the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli Oscar-winning film “Romeo and Juliet,” when they were 15 and 16 years old, respectively. The film was shot in Italy and became an award-winning critical and box office success.
In January 2023, one day before a new statute of limitations would expire and more than five decades after the facts involved, the film’s stars sued seeking damages for misusing their nude images.
Hussey and Whiting, now 72 and 73, said that Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, deceived them and that Paramount “knew or should have known images of plaintiffs’ nude bodies were secretly and unlawfully obtained during the performance.”
That complaint was dismissed when a Superior Court judge ruled that it had been a “gross mischaracterization” to describe the scene at issue as “pornographic material.”
Hussey and Whiting next filed a second lawsuit in February, this time arguing that the 2023 release of a new digitally remastered DVD version of the movie contained, “digitally enhanced photographs of Whiting and Hussey lying together in the nude in a bed simulating a newly married couple luxuriating after a session of marital coitus,” and seeking over $500 million in damages.
The complaint also alleged that the new version contained “computer created, digitally enhanced photographs of the aureoles and nipples on Hussey’s naked breasts,” and falsely portrayed the actors as “willing participants in the purveyance of prurient abuse of youthful pulchritude in the service of monetary gain and rendered them the subject of ridicule and obloquy rather than respect and praise for their virtuoso performances.”
The actors argued that Zeffirelli assured them there would be no nudity in the film and that they would wear flesh-colored undergarments during the single bedroom scene, but that on the shoot date, he insisted they film the scene nude or risk never working again in the acting field.
Paramount filed an anti-SLAPP motion in response to the lawsuit, arguing that the dismissal of the first lawsuit “should have been the end of this nonsense,” given specifically that Whiting and Hussey had defended the nude scenes in the past as having been “tastefully” done.
Paramount’s motion also argued that the rerelease was actually a “lower picture quality” and “lower resolution” than the original release of the film.
Superior Court Judge Holly Fujie sided with the studio. In a 10-page ruling, Fujie said the actors cannot prove they did not consent to the scene.
The judge also noted that “Plaintiffs’ subsequent conduct in the decades that followed since the Film’s original 1968 release speaks to Plaintiffs’ implied ratification and approval of the Film, including the Bedroom Scene,” and pointed to statements made by the actors in appearances and interviews, as well as their attendance at film festivals where the film was shown.
Fujie also rejected the argument that the rerelease was meaningfully different from the original film, finding that there was, “no significant visible improvement in the film, particularly in the Bedroom Scene, to the naked eye.”
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