The complaint of the two actors, who played Romeo and Juliet as teenagers in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film, accusing the studio of a scene of non-consensual nudity was dismissed by a US judge on Thursday.
• Also read: 1968 Ex-teens from Romeo and Juliet file complaint about nude scene
Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting were 15 and 16 respectively at the time of filming, the complaint said.
They each received a Golden Globe for their performance in the film.
The two actors, now in their 70s, filed a complaint in California in December, accusing the Paramount studio that produced the film of sexually exploiting them as minors by broadcasting an intimate scene in which their buttocks were exposed and her breasts come to light buttocks. bare breasts.
On Thursday, a Los Angeles judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling in favor of Paramount and ruling that the scene in question did not fall under “child pornography.” The judge also ruled that the film fell under the rules protecting freedom of expression.
The plaintiffs did not present sufficient evidence “that the film in question can be considered sufficiently sexually suggestive to be considered definitively illegal,” the judge wrote in a decision reported by Variety.
The magazine had pointed out that Olivia Hussey had defended the offending scene in her columns during an interview in 2018. She believed at the time that Franco Zeffirelli shot the scene appropriately.
“It was necessary for the film,” she said at the time.
But in their lawsuit, the actor duo burdened the Italian director Franco Zeffirelli, who died in 2019. According to the document, the filmmaker was adamant that this scene be shot or “the film would fail,” even though it was originally intended to be done with flesh-colored underwear.
The two actors explain that in the more than five decades following the film, they have suffered from anxiety and emotional distress. They are asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.
Her attorney “strongly” disagreed with the judge’s decision on Thursday. In a press release to AFP, he announced his intention to bring the case before the US federal judiciary soon.
“The exploitation and sexualization of minors in the film industry must be addressed and addressed legally to protect vulnerable people,” he said.