Leonard Whiting
Franco Zeffirelli assisting Leonard Whiting, who was wearing a mask, during the filming ofRomeo and Juliet (1968)
Born	(1950-06-30)30 June 1950 (age 75) Wood Green,Middlesex, England
Occupation(s)	Actor, singer
Years active	1965–1979, 1990–1994, 2015
Spouses	Cathee Dahmen ​ ​ (m. 1971; div. 1977)​ Lynn Presser ​ (m. 1995)​
Children	2

Leonard Whiting (born 30 June 1950) is a British semi-retired actor and singer widely known for his teenage role asRomeo inFranco Zeffirelli's1968 film version ofRomeo and Juliet,^[1] a role which earned him theGolden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor in 1969.^[2]

Whiting was born on 30 June 1950,^[3] inWood Green, moving with his two sisters to Holloway, another area of North London, England. The only son of Peggy Joyce (O'Sullivan) and Arthur Leonard Whiting, he has English, Irish and someRomani ancestry. His love of performing was encouraged at his local Church and Primary School, St Josephs R.C Highgate, where he and sister Linda acted in the school's nativity plays. Leonard went on to attend St. Richard of Chichester School,Camden Town, leaving in 1967, before his 17th birthday, to begin work onRomeo and Juliet (1968).^{[4][5][6][7][8]}

Whiting had some success as a child singer, almost winningButlin's Talent Contest (he came second) hosted in the holiday camp's packed out Gaiety Theatre.^[9] He was later spotted by a theatrical agent at theConnaught Rooms Holborn, where he was performing at a Jewish wedding at the age of 12. He only sang one song ("Summertime") which he had rehearsed as a one-off song with the group Teal Lewis and the Fourtunes, who provided the evening's entertainment. This appearance was set up by his father to get him noticed. After hearing him sing, the agent suggested he try out forLionel Bart'sOliver! which constantly needed replacements for its child performers.^[9] Whiting played theArtful Dodger in the long-running London musical for 15 months, and for 13 months in 1965–1966 appeared atLaurence Olivier'sNational Theatre in the production ofWilliam Congreve'sLove for Love opposite Olivier, which toured Moscow andBerlin.^[10][11][12]

DirectorFranco Zeffirelli described his discovery, from 300 youngsters who had auditioned over a period of more than three months as: "He has a magnificent face, gentle melancholy, sweet, the kind of idealistic young man Romeo ought to be."^[9] Olivier did an uncredited narration in the 1968 production ofRomeo and Juliet for Zeffirelli.

He played the male lead, oppositeJean Simmons in the 1971 film,^[13]Say Hello to Yesterday, a romantic comedy, filmed on location in and around London, set over one day, with him pursuing a bored housewife, twice his age storyline. In 1973, he played the title role in the made-for-TV filmFrankenstein: The True Story alongside an all-star cast that includedJames Mason,Ralph Richardson,John Gielgud,Jane Seymour,Agnes Moorehead andDavid McCallum.

In the mid-1970s, his voice caught the attention ofAbbey Road andThe Dark Side of the Moon engineerAlan Parsons, who was in the process of recording what was to be the first album bythe Alan Parsons Project,Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Whiting performed lead vocals on the song "The Raven"^[14] and also narrated "To One in Paradise".

Whiting was cast as the Pharaoh inJoseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in London's Westminster Theatre between 27 November 1978 and 17 January 1979. This was a Ken Hill production with the Pharaoh played by Whiting in the style ofElvis Presley.^[15][16]

In 1990, Whiting provided the voice of the Urpney scientist Urpgor in the children's animated television seriesThe Dreamstone.^[17] After voicing the character for three seasons, he was replaced by Colin Marsh for the fourth and final season.

In 2014, he reunited professionally with his friendOlivia Hussey forSocial Suicide (2015), their first film together in the 46 years since theFranco Zeffirelli production ofRomeo and Juliet.^[18]

Whiting dated "Romeo & Juliet" co-starOlivia Hussey for a time and the two remained close until her death in 2024.^[6] In 1971, he married US modelCathee Dahmen^[19] and in 1972, they had a daughter, Sarah Beth Whiting, who died in America in 2014 from cervical cancer.^[19]

Following his divorce from Dahmen in 1977, Whiting had a relationship with theatre designer Valerie Marion Tobin, who gave birth to their daughter Charlotte. Charlotte has said publicly that she did not meet her father until she was 12, by which time she had takenher step-father's surname, Westenra (her mother had remarried in 1982). Charlotte Westenra became a theatre director.^[20][21][22]

In 1995, Whiting married his partner of 23 years Lynn (née Mandell) Presser - a European company director. Whiting ended his film career, for the most part, in the mid-1970s and subsequently focused on his theatrical career as an actor and writer.^[23] He and his wife live in Steele's Village inHaverstock, north London.^[24]

On 30 December 2022, Whiting's lawyer filed joint legal actions with his former co-star Olivia Hussey in Los Angeles againstParamount Pictures for sexual abuse and fraud during the filming ofRomeo and Juliet, when he was aged 17 (she was 16), alleging the nude scenes amounted to child abuse.^{[25][26][27][28]} The reported $100+ million^[29] claim for punitive damages is made possible due to the temporary suspension of the statute-of-limitations laws in theState of California for claims of historic sexual abuse allegations. Paramount Pictures have reportedly earned up to $500 million from the production, and Whiting, according to business manager Tony Marinozzi,^[30] wants Paramount held accountable for the mental and emotional abuse suffered over the intervening years. The third act nude sequence, it is claimed, was "secretly filmed" in September 1967 by directorFranco Zeffirelli, over the objections from the two stars, who played Romeo and Juliet in the film, released in 1968. If substantiated, this would show that Whiting was aged 17 years and 2 months during the controversially shot scenes-below the legal required age of 18 (as was co-star Olivia Hussey who would have been aged 16) for filming of nude scenes.^[29][31][32] The case was dismissed in Los Angeles Superior Court on 25 May 2023.^[33]

• Leonard Whiting atIMDb

• 1950 births
• English male film actors
• English people of Irish descent
• English male stage actors
• English male singers
• Living people
• Actors from the London Borough of Haringey
• 20th-century English male actors
• 21st-century English male actors
• New Star of the Year (Actor) Golden Globe winners
• People from Wood Green

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