Actor alleges she was pursued through LA by paparazzi who put ‘other drivers and pedestrians at risk’ after her appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s chatshow

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Scarlett Johansson warned of another incident “like Princess Diana” after alleging she was pursued through Los Angeles by a group of paparazzi. The actor, 34, said she was leaving a studio following an appearance on US talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! when a group of photographers spotted her.

Five cars with blacked-out windows then apparently sped through red lights and put “other drivers and pedestrians at risk” so their paparazzi passengers could obtain details of where she and her four-year-old daughter were staying.

Johansson said such a situation is “a waiting game before another person gets seriously injured or killed, like Princess Diana”.

The star of Avengers: Endgame issued a statement on Tuesday, saying: “The paparazzi consistently go to increasingly dangerous lengths to stalk and harass the people they are photographing.

“Even after Princess Diana’s tragic death, the laws were never changed to protect targets from the lawless paparazzi.”

Johansson, said she felt “it was my duty as a concerned citizen” to visit a nearby police station. However, did not appear to have filed charges and no crime was reported. In her statement, Johansson called for paparazzi to be classified as “criminal stalkers by law”.

She said: “Women across the US are stalked, harassed and frightened and a universal law to address stalking must be at the forefront of law enforcement conversations.”

In the US, celebrity news outlets are protected under the first amendment, which enshrines into law the freedom of the press. Different states have their own laws on photographers, for example in California it is illegal to take pictures of celebrities’ children in a harassing manner.

In 2011, nude photographs Johansson had sent to her then-husband, Ryan Reynolds, were hacked from the mobile phone and published online. An FBI investigation led to the arrest and conviction of the hacker, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Three years later, Johansson won a lawsuit against a French publisher after defamatory statements about her relationships were published in the novel The First Thing We Look At.

Johansson’s role as the Black Widow in the Avengers films has contributed heavily to her status as the highest-grossing female actor of all time in North America. In 2018, Forbes magazine named her the best-paid female actor in the world, making over $40m.