By Michael Perry
SYDNEY—Hollywood star Nicole Kidman said on
Monday she crouched on the back seat of her car, tearful and
frightened that it would crash as she was pursued by a paparazzi
photographer in Australia in 2005.
Kidman told the New South Wales Supreme Court
that her driver John Manning said the photographer pursuing
them, as they headed to her parents’ Sydney home on January 23,
2005, was driving recklessly, had run a red light and jumped a
concrete divider.
"I was crouched down for most of the trip,"
Kidman told the court, demonstrating how she rested her head on
her hands which were in a pray-like pose.
"I was told by John Manning that we were
being followed by Jamie Fawcett and another car. He said they
were driving crazy, had run a red a light and jumped a median
strip," she said.
"I was frightened and I was worried about a
car accident. I was really, really scared," said the
Oscar-winning actress.
When she eventually arrived at her parents’
house her driver was shaken and she was "in tears and
distressed", Kidman said, in testimony which evoked images of
the Paris car chase in which Princess Diana was killed in 1997.
Dressed in a grey skirt and cream blouse and
cardigan, the Australian actress was giving evidence in a
defamation case by Sydney photographer Jamie Fawcett against
Fairfax Media.
A Supreme Court jury has found a January 2005
article in the Sun Herald newspaper defamed Fawcett and the
current hearings are considering whether the publishers have any
defense.
Kidman was escorted into the packed Sydney
courtroom by three sheriffs, who had to bring in extra chairs
for the actress and her legal team to sit on.
Sitting bolt upright, Kidman answered many
questions with a simple "yes" or "yeah" and was at times asked
by Judge Carolyn Simpson to speak up. During her evidence
Fawcett sat in court, sometimes rustling through paperwork.
Kidman said that she had not actually seen
Fawcett pursue her on the day in 2005. But she said on the same
day her mother had spotted the photographer outside Kidman’s
luxury east Sydney home and her staff had told her a listening
device had been found by the house.
Kidman said she felt "deeply disturbed" by
the discovery of the listening device.
She said Fawcett and his employees had
pursued her on numerous occasions and that she was now too
scared to drive herself and employed a driver and 24 hour
security service.
"I have been pursued many times, in relation
to this particular man and the people he has employed to follow
me," said Kidman.
She told the court that her security had told
her that Fawcett had been on her honeymoon island in Tahiti, but
that she did not see him or any other photographer.
One incident in which Kidman did see Fawcett
pursue her occurred during a Christmas 2006 holiday in Australia
when she and her husband Keith Urban felt trapped in their beach
house.
"We were told that Jamie Fawcett was hiding
in the bushes outside the house and we were told this by the
security I employ," said Kidman.
"I didn’t want to stay up there feeling
trapped and so didn’t Keith, so we decided to drive back and we
were pursued by Jamie Fawcett," she said.
Kidman said that when her husband stopped the
car to check their legal rights with Fawcett, who once had a
court restraining order placed on him by Kidman, the
photographer started taking pictures.
Kidman has been at the centre of several
paparazzi incidents.
In 1999, a freelance journalist was convicted
in the United States of illegally taping an intercepted
telephone call from Kidman to her then-husband, actor Tom
Cruise, and selling the tape to a tabloid newspaper.
The Sydney case continues, hearing evidence on the definition
of defamation. – Reuters