SCARLETT JOHANSSON has been awarded legal damages by a French court following a lawsuit against an author whose promiscuous actress character was based on the star. Lawyers for the American actress maintained that the story - in which the character based on her has a series of love affairs with other celebrities - amounted to a "fraudulent use of her personal rights".

Gregoire Delacourt's novel The First Thing We Look At is a "satire on celebrity culture," the author maintains, and was not in any way intended to offend Johansson.

"It was meant as the highest praise. She is an archetypal beauty of our times, very human with a touching fragility," he said following the court date. "She is a wonderful, iconic actress. I was hoping that she might send me flowers because this book is, in a way, a declaration of love."

Johansson did not appreciate the sentiment, it seems, and her lawyer told the court that Delacourt's book presented her as a "sex object" and that the series of love affairs depicted in the work never took place. The two-time Vogue cover girl also sought an injunction to stop the novel being translated or adapted for cinema, but the court denied that request. The actress has not yet commented on the verdict.

"If I had known she was going to kick up such a racket, I would have picked another actress," Delacourt complained. "All these famous people live with us all the time. Celebrity culture is imposed on us by the media, the press and the internet. So her complaint is based on exactly the phenomenon I am denouncing. It's a paradox. But I suppose it's all very American."

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