Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, who played the titular roles in 1968's "Romeo and Juliet," have sued Paramount Pictures for more than $500 million over a nude scene in the film shot when they were teenagers, new court documents show.

Hussey, then 15 and now 71, and Whiting, then 16 now 72, filed the suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court Friday alleging sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud after the nude scene was included in the film, despite alleged reassurance from Director Franco Zeffirelli nudity would not be shown.

Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, allegedly told the two young actors that they would wear flesh-colored undergarments in the bedroom scene and would use camera angles to obscure the nudity, the suit alleges.

According to the suit, the scene was shot on the final days of filming and ignored those previous assurances.

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Whiting, who played Romeo, and Hussey, who played Juliet, said they were filmed in the nude without their knowledge, in violation of California and federal laws against indecency and the exploitation of children, the suit says.

The two stars said Zeffirelli told them they must act in the nude "or the Picture would fail," the suit said. He also suggested their careers would be hurt, it added. So, the actors "believed they had no choice but to act in the nude in body makeup as demanded," the suit said.

The scene in question, which comes near the end of the film, briefly showed Whiting's bare buttocks and Hussey's bare breasts.

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"What they were told and what went on were two different things," said Tony Marinozzi, a business manager for both actors, according to Variety. "They trusted Franco. At 16, as actors, they took his lead that he would not violate that trust they had. Franco was their friend, and frankly, at 16, what do they do? There are no options. There was no #MeToo."

The film was an international sensation at the time and was nominated for four Academy Awards. In the 55 years since its release, it has been widely shown to high school students who study the Shakespeare play.

Hussey and Whiting said they suffered emotional damage and mental anguish for decades and their careers did not reflect the success of the movie, according to the suit.

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"Nude images of minors are unlawful and shouldn’t be exhibited," said Solomon Gresen, the actors’ attorney, Variety reported. "These were very young naive children in the ’60s who had no understanding of what was about to hit them. All of a sudden they were famous at a level they never expected, and in addition they were violated in a way they didn’t know how to deal with."

Fox News Digital reached out to representatives of Paramount, but a response was not immediately returned.

The lawsuit was filed under a California law temporarily suspending the statute of limitations for child sex abuse, which has led to a host of new lawsuits and the revival of many others that were previously dismissed.

In 2018, Hussey described the controversial scene as "very taboo" in America but seemed to defend its use in the European-set film as it was "done very tastefully."

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"I think because it was done very tastefully," she told Fox News. "And in Europe, it was very different. In America, it was very taboo. But in Europe a lot of the films had nudity. Nobody really thought much of it. But it was just the fact that I was 16 that got a lot of publicity… The large crew we worked with was whittled down to only the very basic people, a handful of people. It was done later in the day when it wasn’t busy. It was a closed set."

Despite being unclothed, Hussey described being at ease on set.

"If you see it, the reality is these two young kids married against their parents’ wishes and have this one night together and then they die… And it wasn’t really banned in any country… And we shot it at the very end of the film. So by that time… we’ve all become a big family… It wasn’t that big of a deal. And Leonard wasn’t shy at all! In the middle of shooting, I just completely forgot I didn’t have clothes on," she said at the time.

According to the suit, the actors are seeking damages of more than $500 million.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

President Lyndon B. Johnson proposed a utopian new vision for the United States under a vastly expanded federal government, which he dubbed the Great Society, on this day in history, Jan. 4, 1965. 

"We seek to establish a harmony between man and society, which will allow each of us to enlarge the meaning of his life and all of us to elevate the quality of our civilization. This is the search that we begin tonight," the president declared to the nation in his State of the Union address.

It was the first televised State of the Union, delivered in primetime directly to the American people, not just to both chambers of Congress as the Constitution requires. 

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"The Great Society asks not how much, but how good; not only how to create wealth but how to use it; not only how fast we are going, but where we are headed," the president added, while imploring all Americans to action.

The Great Society "will not be the gift of government or the creation of presidents," he also said.

Johnson's vision offered a helping hand to Americans most in need, proponents of the Great Society have argued over the years. 

His vision failed dramatically by any empirical measure and succeeded only in expanding the size and inefficiency of the federal bureaucracy and in institutionalizing generational poverty, its critics have noted.

Johnson assumed the Oval Office following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. 

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LBJ was elected to the office a year later, soundly defeating challenger and Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater (486 to 52 votes in the electoral college), just nine weeks before the State of the Union.

He used his overwhelming victory as a mandate in the State of the Union to defend the need for enhanced U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and to propose the federal government as an answer to a vast array of human ills and societal problems. 

"We are [in Vietnam] first," he said, "because a friendly nation has asked us for help against the communist aggression … To ignore aggression now would only increase the danger of a much larger war," he added. 

He then issued nine direct proposals, the foundation of the Great Society, to tackle everything from education and crime to the environment and urban renewal. 

His challenges included more obtuse objectives, too.

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"I propose that we make an all-out campaign against waste and inefficiency," Johnson said in announcing his federal government wish list. 

Johnson introduced the term "Great Society" on the campaign trail in 1964, a phrase coined by speechwriter Richard N. Goodwin. 

His 1965 State of the Union was followed by an intense flurry of legislative activity from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who were in the midst of a 26-year period of controlling both chambers of Congress (1955-81). 

"The 1965 State of the Union address heralded the creation of Medicare/Medicaid, Head Start, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the White House Conference on Natural Beauty," writes History.com. 

"Johnson also signed the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities Act, out of which emerged the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities."

The Great Society was, at its core, an effort to attack poverty in America and the challenges to education, health and opportunity that come with it. 

Johnson had introduced the "war on poverty" in his State of the Union a year earlier.

In this central goal — to reduce or even eliminate poverty — the Great Society has been a boondoggle by any empirical measure. 

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"The War on Poverty was destined to be one of the great failures of 20-century liberalism," said historian and Rice University professor Allen J. Matusow, according to the Foundation for Economic Freedom. 

"Those who most directly benefited," he continued, "were the middle-class doctors, teachers, social workers, builders and bankers who provided federally subsidized goods and services of sometimes suspect value."

The foundation added, citing poverty researcher Michael D. Tanner of the Cato Institute: "Throwing money at the problem has neither reduced poverty nor made the poor self-sufficient. Instead, government programs have torn at the social fabric of the country and been a significant factor in increasing out-of-wedlock births with all of their attendant problems."

It continued, "Most tragically of all, the pathologies they engender have been passed on from parent to child, from generation to generation."

The quality of public education in America, meanwhile, has declined across all demographics and sectors of society since the 1960s, while the gap between the educational achievement of Black and White children is greater than ever, according to numerous educational studies.

The Great Society has succeeded in turning the federal government into an insatiable leviathan. 

The federal budget ballooned from $118.2 billion, when Johnson came to office in 1963, to $195.6 billion when he left in 1969, according to the American Presidency Project at University of California Santa Barbara. That's an increase of 65.5%. 

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The federal budget last year was $6 trillion with a $1.8 trillion deficit, according to the same report.

"The hopes and promises articulated by Johnson were grandiose, and inevitably raised expectations (bringing an end to poverty and racism for example) that no president could realistically hope to achieve," George Washington University historian and professor of political management Matthew Dallek wrote in 2015. 

"Though many of Johnson’s programs remain in place today," writes History.com, "his legacy of a Great Society has been largely overshadowed by his decision to involve greater numbers of American soldiers in the controversial Vietnam War."