The 1968 production of the William Shakespeare classic briefly featured nudity involving 15- and 16-year-old children Italian stage and film director, Franco Zeffirelli with Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, during the filming of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in 1967 © Getty Images / Express/Express/Getty Images Top stories Russia outlines conditions for Ukraine peace deal Latest Top Stories Offering NATO pathway to Ukraine led to war – Kissinger Why the EU’s economic engine is breaking down EXPLAINER US treasury secretary revises default deadline 80% of Chinese blame US for Ukraine conflict – study Fyodor Lukyanov: G7 members want the rest of the world to join their crusade against Russia and China. They won’t succeed ANALYSIS Vladimir Avatkov: Russia has at least eight reasons to get closer to its ‘sworn enemy’ ANALYSIS .breaking-news[data-href=”Romeo ‘Romeo and Juliet’ nude scene ‘not child pornography’ – judge”] { display: none; }
A judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought by two actors from a 1968 film production of William Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ who claimed that a nude scene they shot in their teens constituted child pornography, and that they had been sexually abused while filming it.
Superior Court Judge Alison Mackenzie ruled in favor of the defendant Paramount Pictures this week after actors Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, who are both now 72, claimed in a legal filing that a scene in which Hussey’s bare breasts and Whiting’s buttocks were exposed amounted to child abuse.
Judge Mackenzie dismissed the claim on Thursday, saying the pair “have not put forth any authority showing the film here can be deemed to be sufficiently sexually suggestive as a matter of law to be held conclusively illegal.”
Hussey and Whiting claimed during the case that the film’s director, Franco Zeffirelli, had initially said that nudity would not be required. But they said the since-deceased Zeffirelli later informed them that wearing flesh-colored garments would not be sufficient and he insisted that the teenagers perform nude, “or the picture would fail.” (RT)
