This just in – the paparazzi makes Nicole Kidman sad. Actually, that's a lie – we don't know how the paparazzi makes Nicole Kidman feel now – but in January 2005 the paparazzi definitely made Nicole Kidman sad.
How sad? Sad enough for Nicole Kidman to turn up in court yesterday and legally testify that a photographer made her cry by trying to take her picture back on January 23, 2005. As part of a defamation suit against an Australian newspaper by Jamie Fawcett, the photographer in question, Nicole Kidman showed up at the New South Wales State Supreme Court in Sydney to say that she was reduced to tears when Fawcett chased her almost three years ago. This news will come as an incredible surprise to anyone who, like us, presumed that Nicole Kidman's tear-ducts were Botoxed into everlasting paralysis long, long ago.
Aside from the money, fame, glamour, jet-set lifestyle and the comforting thought that she never has to work again, Nicole Kidman has a lot to cry about. There was her failed marriage to Tom Cruise, for example, and the way she never seems able to have the children she's dreamt of for so long. There's the way that Nicole Kidman's current husband is a recovering alcoholic and the way that Nicole Kidman hasn't made a decent film for six years. Then there's the weird sonar/ rape alarm noise that Nicole Kidman does at the end of her Nintendo DS advert.
No, wait, that's us. That noise Nicole Kidman does makes us cry.
But anyway, you can see our point. Nicole Kidman has a lot to cry about. Whether she's actually cried about any of those things is another matter, though. But what we do know for sure is that Nicole Kidman definitely cried on January 23, 2005 – because yesterday she told an Australian court that she did.
Nicole Kidman testified as part of a defamation suit against Sydney's Sun-Herald newspaper by photographer Jamie Fawcett, who the paper claimed was Sydney's "most inventive and disliked freelance photographer… determined to wreak havoc on Kidman's private life." Although the court has already found that the newspaper defamed Fawcett, Nicole Kidman's testimony was needed to help establish what amount of damages Fawcett should be paid.
That'll be hardly any if Nicole Kidman gets her way, because her testimony yesterday hinted that Fawcett was lucky not to have caused a pile-up:
"I have been pursued many times. I have had this happen in relation to this particular man…so many times. [The driver] said they were driving crazy and that they had run red lights and jumped the median strip. I was frightened, and I was worried about a car accident…. I employ people to protect me now. I employ people 24 hours to protect myself, because I don't feel equipped to handle things."
Although Nicole Kidman has helped to shine a light on all the distress that celebrities must constantly deal with at the hands of persistent photographers, there is at least one up-side to the story – at least we know that Nicole Kidman is still capable of believable emotion. After The Invasion and The Stepford Wives and Bewitched, we had begun to worry.
Adam Gade says
Is she winking, laughing or having an orgasm in that picture?