Kidman says scared of crash in paparazzi car chase
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 defence.
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.