Amidst a sexual abuse lawsuit against Paramount Pictures, Brooke Shields recalled a painful experience while filming Endless Love with Romeo & Juliet director Franco Zeffirelli.

Per Deadline, in her upcoming Hulu docuseries Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, the actor opened up about her experience in Zeffirelli's 1981 romantic melodrama Endless Love. Shields, who was 16 during the making of Endless Love, recalled that she did not feel safe with Zefirelli as a director, particularly in a film about sexually active teenagers in Chicago. "The physicality and the exploration of sexuality felt really dangerous to me, and I didn’t trust the director to create a safe environment for me," she said.

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One particular incident during the production of Endless Love called for a sex scene between Shields and Martin Hewitt, who portrayed David. According to Shields, Zeffirelli twisted her toe during the scene to get the desired reaction he wanted out of her. However, Shields said that instead of "passion," her reaction was that of "angst…because he was hurting me."

Shields Recalls Her Experience in Endless Love

Endless Love was a box office success, grossing $32 million on a $9.7 million budget. "I was really shutdown after that," Shields said of the experience. "I thought of myself as just the work horse: They paid me, I did the thing, they sold it, everybody was happy, it was transactional." Shields' comments about Zeffirelli, who passed away in 2019, come amidst an ongoing lawsuit against Paramount Pictures for sexual abuse.

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In January, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, the stars of Zeffirelli's 1968 adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, filed a lawsuit against Paramount for child abuse over a nude scene in the film. Both actors are now in their 70s, though they were teenagers at the time the film was made: Hussey, who played Juliet, was 15, and Whiting, who played Romeo, was 16. While the actors were promised that the film would have no nudity. However, shortly before the infamous bedroom scene was filmed, both Hussey and Whiting were allegedly told by the director that they had to perform the scene nude or "the Picture would fail." The two actors are now seeking damages reported to be in excess of $500 million.

"It doesn’t surprise me," Shields told Deadline about the lawsuit. "It was a very different era in filmmaking and many different directors took liberties. They’d tell the actors one thing, and then tell the studio another." She added, "They were in charge and they were the star really."

Zeffirelli's son, Pippo Zeffirelli, responded to the lawsuit shortly after it was filed, refuting claims made by Hussey and Whiting. "The nude images in the film express the beauty, the transport, I would even say the candor of mutual giving and do not contain any morbid feeling," Zeffirelli said in a written statement.

Source: via Deadline