LONDON – Actress Sienna Miller told a British court on Monday of her terror as paparazzi photographers chased her car across London after she left a trendy nightclub.
The 26-year-old said she had tried desperately to evade the photographers to stop them learning her new address.
Giving evidence for 30 minutes, Miller said photographers darted in and out of traffic and nearly blinded her driver by taking flash pictures.
The paparazzi cut off cars and buses and dangerously overtook on blind corners in a bid to grab another picture, she told West London Magistrates Court.
“I felt scared and threatened. Their actions were aggressive, to say the least,” Miller told the court.
“I believed it was particularly frenzied on this occasion because they did not know where I lived and they were particularly keen to find out so they could follow me more and get the pictures they wanted.”
Dressed in a dark grey mini-skirt suit with her long blonde hair tied up, Miller gave her testimony just hours after she missed out on a prize at the British film awards, the BAFTAs.
She said she had slouched in the backseat of her Mercedes as the photographers drove like “lunatics” trying to take her picture, and rang her boyfriend pleading for him to help her escape them.
Miller was in the witness box as the key defense witness in a case involving her ex-boyfriend’s brother, Otis Ferry, who was accused of criminal damage.
Ferry, the son of Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry, was with his brother, Isaac — Miller’s then boyfriend — and the actress, as they left Boujis nightclub in west London, last February.
Miller, one of the most photographed woman in Britain, had been celebrating at the exclusive nightclub, favored by London socialites and celebrities, during a private function after last year’s BAFTAs.
Ferry, 25, from Shrewsbury, western England, was cleared of two counts of criminal damage by forcibly removing the keys from two photographers’ cars.
The court had been told that the photographers were stranded for several hours, costing them lucrative income as well as 180 pounds for new keys.
District Judge David Simpson said: “Those members of the public who do not have a seemingly insatiable desire for celebrity pictures might not have much sympathy for the paparazzi bearing in mind, no doubt, their treatment of the late Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton and, more recently, Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears.”
Outside court, Ferry said he was relieved by the verdict, but questioned why it had taken a year for his case to come before a judge.