Romeo & Juliet stars sue over 1968 film’s teen nude scene

Just when the #MeToo movement looked to be getting marginalised in just the way activists had feared, a new frontier has opened up – history.

Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, who as teens starred in Franco Zeffirelli’s movie version of Romeo and Juliet in 1968, are suing Paramount for more than $500m for child abuse in the semi-nude scene they say they were made to do, having originally been assured by the director that this would not be necessary. This was act three, scene five – in which the star crossed, loved-up hero and heroine awake after their (secret) wedding night.

To a modern eye, it looks pretty tame: Romeo is naked face down and Zeffirelli’s camera lingers on his buttocks – Juliet has the sheet pulled up almost to her shoulders but her breasts are briefly revealed towards the end of the scene.

These are, after all, children we are talking about (Whiting was 16, Hussey 15). Who knows what traumatic arguments and negotiations led up to this staging on the day, or whether the parents or chaperones felt bullied by the director on set into allowing more than they signed up to? That’s if they were allowed anywhere near the set. There were no intimacy coaches in those days…….

But as for the past, who knows what will happen? Brooke Shields has not expressed regret over her underage roles playing a sexually exploited child in the 1978 film Pretty Baby and a teenager discovering her sexuality in the 1980 film The Blue Lagoon – though she sees the exploitative nature of the business as clearly as anyone.

Jodie Foster has not indicated any resentment over playing a sexually exploited girl in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver in 1976. But how about other films?

At 11, Kirsten Dunst had to kiss Brad Pitt in Interview With the Vampire: she has expressed distaste for this and left it there – but there may be other movie sets and productions where people are not in a forgiving mood and studio chiefs will be terrified of legal market forces driving new legislation.

A lot is riding on the Romeo and Juliet lawsuit…..



https://www.theguardian.com/film/20...film-abuse-case-me-too?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other