Romeo and Juliet Olivia Hussey 15 sued the nude film company for 640 billion won.
The main actors of the 1960s masterpiece “Romeo and Juliet,” which was loved worldwide, filed a lawsuit against the film production company. It’s been 55 years.
Olivia Hussey (71) and Leonard Witting (72), who enjoyed the most perfect beauty of their time, recently filed a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures, a film production company, for a total of $500 million (about 639.4 billion won).
He is accused of cheating two teenagers at the time of filming and conducting nude shots. According to foreign media, they claimed that the bed scene in the second half of “Romeo and Juliet” was filmed naked without the main actors knowing in the first trial court in Los Angeles County, California, which constitutes sexual harassment and child exploitation.
It was also pointed out that Paramount distributed a film containing nude scenes of teenagers. According to the complaint, director Franco Zepirelli (died 2019), who directed the film, explained to the actors that he would wear skin-colored underwear before filming the bed scene. At the time, Hassay was 15 and Witting was 16.
However, the story changed on the morning of the actual shooting. Zepirelli told Hatshe and Whiting that they had to film with simple makeup on their bodies without underwear.
Director Zepirelli gave a clue that he would adjust the location of the camera so that his body was not exposed, but the actors’ hips and chest were exposed in the film.
In the complaint, they said, “The director must shoot naked, or the movie will fail and the actors’ careers will be ruined,” and claimed, “The actors had no other choice.”
The actors said they suffered decades of mental pain and insisted that they should receive more than $500 million considering the film company’s profits from “Romeo and Juliet.”
The lawsuit was filed under a California law that temporarily removed the statute of limitations for child sex crimes.
According to AFP and the Los Angeles Times, the 2020 law revision allowed adults to file lawsuits for sex crimes they experienced as children for three years, with complaints poured into state courts by December 31 last year, the deadline.
