Kidman says she feared paparazzo

Nicole Kidman told a courtroom Monday how she was reduced to tears and feared a car accident after a celebrity photographer pursued her two years ago.

Kidman was testifying in her hometown of Sydney, Australia, in the photographer’s defamation suit against a Sydney newspaper that slammed him for allegedly hounding the Oscar-winning actress.

She said the 2005 trip from her house to her parents’ home quickly turned into a hair-raising chase as a vehicle carrying photographer Jamie Fawcett and another vehicle, believed to contain his assistant, lurched through traffic around Kidman’s car.

Fawcett, a well-known celebrity photographer in Sydney, is suing the Sun-Herald newspaper for defamation over an article that said he was Sydney’s most disliked freelance photographer and was determined to “wreak havoc” on Kidman’s private life.

A jury has already found that the article defamed Fawcett. The current hearing is to decide whether the newspaper’s publisher, Fairfax Media, should pay the photographer damages.