Judge dismisses 1968 Romeo & Juliet underage nudity lawsuit (again)

A second lawsuit brought by Romeo & Juliet stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey has been dismissed, according to The Wrap. Whiting and Hussey originally filed a suit in 2022 alleging that director Franco Zeffrelli tricked them regarding the nudity in the movie, which was filmed when they were 16 and 17 years old. (The suit was filed not against Zeffrelli’s estate, but the studio, Paramount.) A judge dismissed that suit in 2023, citing expired statute of limitations. The actors sued again in February 2024, arguing that the Criterion Collection re-release of the film negated the statute of limitations. 

Judge Holly J. Fujie ruled that the re-release wasn’t grounds enough for a new suit and further argued that the actors consented to being in the film by nature of their contracts. “Even in the absence of express consent, however, 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,” the judge added in the ruling. “This includes, among others, appearances and statements made by Plaintiffs during interviews and attendance at film festivals, during which Plaintiffs did not object to the continuing release and distribution of the successive releases of the Film.”

The Romeo & Juliet case is a complicated one. There’s a strong case to be made that Zeffirelli did indeed exploit his underage stars. They were reportedly paid very little; they were lied to about the nude scene and what it would entail; and Hussey suffered from years of body image issues that could credibly be attributed to Zeffirelli’s treatment of her on the film. (Among other things, he called her to set by calling the name “Boobs O’Mina.”) The endorsement cited in the judge’s ruling—that the actors spoke positively of the movie and of the nude scene in the years following the movie—is also somewhat dubious given that the actors were incredibly young and at the beck and call of a major Hollywood studio. Exploitation is pretty much baked into that scenario. 

Unfortunately, if there is a legal case to be made about Romeo & Juliet, Whiting and Hussey haven’t had the best team behind them to make it. A previous Vulture report detailed how Hussey’s business manager urged her to file the suit, partially because he wanted to write a screenplay about the situation. Four lawyers interviewed by Vulture found the original complaint filed by the actors’ lawyer Solomon Gresen to be weak: “It just wasn’t very high-quality lawyering,” one said. Taking on Paramount probably requires high quality, as these two dismissals would suggest.