To tell this story we have to go back in time more than 55 years. The 60s, as they have told us in the movies and on television, were a hippie era, of supposed freedom in every way… But it wasn’t a fairy tale for everyone. And it is that, while in Woodstock the festival of love, music, drugs and sex par excellence was being prepared, Franco Zeffirelli was preparing an adaptation of ‘Romeo and Juliet’… which has now found itself in legal trouble.
unwise madness
Zeffirelli decided that the actors in the film would be two teenagers: at 17, Leonard Whiting would be Romeo, and at 16, his beloved, Olivia Hussey. The actors repeated Shakespearean lines, frolicked, kissed, undressed. Everything seemed so normal that even was nominated for four Oscarsincluding best film and best director (it won for best costumes and cinematography).
But now the two actors, already in their seventies, have decided to sue Paramount for Zeffirelli’s conduct (died in 2019) on the set, which forced them to act nude when, when signing, he assured them that they would wear flesh-colored suits on screen. In fact, For damages caused, they are asking for no less than 500 million dollars.
According to the lawsuit, “nude images of minors are against the law and should not be displayed. These were very young kids in the 60’s and they didn’t know what was about to happen. Suddenly they were famous at a level they didn’t expect, and they didn’t know how to deal with it.” And it is true that her career suffered from her role in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, but it is no less true that Hussey herself stated three years ago which was not that bad: “In the middle of filming I just forgot I had no clothes on”.
You are probably wondering why precisely now: the truth is that it is possible to sue a film from five decades ago because A California law has suspended temporary limitations on child sexual abuse. We’ll see if things go ahead and how it can change the world of cinema seen with hindsight. Will we see Brooke Shields suing ‘The Blue Lake’? Everything is possible.