Scarlett Johansson has warned that paparazzi behaviour could lead to another tragedy like the death of Princess Diana, after she was allegedly chased through Los Angeles by photographers. The 34-year-old actor said she was leaving a studio following an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! when a group of photographers spotted her.
According to Johansson, five cars with blacked-out windows then sped through red lights, putting other drivers and pedestrians at risk, in order to obtain details of where she and her four-year-old daughter were staying. She described the situation as 'a waiting game before another person gets seriously injured or killed, like Princess Diana'.
In a statement on Tuesday, Johansson said: '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.' She called for paparazzi to be classified as 'criminal stalkers by law'.
Johansson said she felt it was her duty as a concerned citizen to visit a nearby police station, but no charges appear to have been filed. In the US, celebrity news outlets are protected under the first amendment, though California has laws against harassing photographs of celebrities' children.
This is not the first time Johansson has faced legal issues related to her privacy. In 2011, nude photographs she had sent to her then-husband Ryan Reynolds were hacked and published online, leading to a 10-year prison sentence for the hacker. In 2014, she won a lawsuit against a French publisher over defamatory statements about her relationships.
