Downton star Jessica Brown Findlay calls for the web to be 'policed' over treatment of women after her nude pictures were leaked in 2014 celebrity hacking scandal

Downton actress Jessica Brown Findlay has spoken for the first time about her distress when nude images of her were hacked and leaked online.

Jessica, 26, revealed her feelings because she wants 'the treatment of women' to change after the infamous hacking which also targeted stars like Jennifer Lawrence and Kirsten Dunst.

The actress, best known for playing Lady Sybil Branson in the ITV drama, told the Sunday Telegraph the internet needed to be 'better policed'.

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Downton actress Jessica Brown Findlay has spoken for the first time about her distress after her nude photos and video were hacked and leaked online

Jessica, left, pictured as Lady Sybil in the period drama with co-stars Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary Crawley and Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith Crawley

Jessica told The Telegraph: 'I want to start speaking up. I want the world to really start looking into the treatment of women, particularly on the internet.

'Because to me, there seems to be two sets of rules: one for the real world and one for the cyber world.'

The actress was one of 100 female celebrities to be hacked along with model Kate Upton, Big Bang Theory actress Kaley Cuoco and British celebrities such as Kelly Brook.

Video clips in which Jessica was seen naked with an unidentified man were taken from her Apple iCloud account in September 2014.

Jessica had nude pictures and video clips taken in the 2014 hacking which saw 100 high-profile female celebrities have their iCloud accounts hacked, pictured in November at the Stella McCartney light switch on

Jessica in her final scene in Downton Abbey when her character died from eclampsia following child birth,  pictured with Allen Leech as Tom Branson

She told The Telegraph: 'I don't understand why in a society where we are encouraged to live through the internet, that the forum is not being better policed.'

At the time, a spokesman for Miss Brown Findlay said she was treating it as a 'criminal matter.'

Her attorneys, Schillings Solicitors also issued a statement at the time, saying: 'Any publication of the photographs (pixilated or otherwise) or the video or any reference to them will perpetuate this distress and further the serious violation of our client's rights in relation to her privacy.'

Jessica wants stronger policing of the internet since there's such a focus on it now, pictured in November at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, Londond

Jessica's Downton Abbey co-star Laura Carmichael previously commented on the hacking to the Mail On Sunday's Event magazine, saying: 'It's just awful. It's a crime. It makes me really sad that this is the world in which we live.

Jennifer Lawrence had her nude images hacked and called it a 'sex crime'

'Terrifying and upsetting. What's happened to my mate is horrendous. I don't understand why it is anything other than criminality and exploitation.' 

Experts believed the intimate images of celebrities put online were obtained by hackers breaking into their internet iCloud accounts, where photos from iPhones can be stored.

The FBI investigated the hacks which Jennifer Lawrence called a 'sex crime.' 

Jessica's character in the period drama died unexpectedly from eclampsia shortly after giving birth to a baby girl.

In 2013, Sybil died in a fit of seizures after her family ignored the country doctor's warnings that she might be toxemic, and must be taken to the hospital for an emergency C-section. 

Since then, Jessica has played the unconventional heroine in BBC's adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's Jamaica Inn and has appeared in films such as the Riot Club and Victor Frankenstein with James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe.

She's currently rehearsing for a production of Uncle Vanya at Almeida Theatre in London, which starts in February, playing Sonya.