Now in their seventies, the two actors filed a complaint last week in Santa Monica, California: they accuse the Paramount studio, which produced the film, of having sexually exploited them when they were still minors.
According to this complaint, consulted by AFP, the Italian director Franco Zeffirelli – who died in 2019 -, heavily insisted that they shoot this scene, otherwise “the film was going to fail”, when it was originally supposed to be done with flesh-colored underwear.
Complaint accuses film makers “of being dishonest and secretly filming nude or partially nude minors without their consent, in violation of laws […] regulating indecency and the sexual exploitation of minors”.
According to the document, the two actors suffered from anxieties and emotional distress in the more than five decades following the film. They are claiming compensation in the amount of several hundred million dollars.
Contacted by AFP, Paramount did not respond immediately to comment on this complaint.
The specialized magazine Variety pointed out that Olivia Hussey had defended the offending scene in her columns during an interview in 2018. At the time, she believed that Franco Zeffirelli had shot it appropriately. “It was necessary for the film,” she said then.
