IT'S impossible for a tall, beautiful, rich, famous actress to appear invisible when giving evidence in court, but Nicole Kidman gave it her best shot. Demure and undramatic were the words that best described her debut in a real-life courtroom drama.
When she was called to testify in a defamation case brought by a paparazzi photographer against a Sydney newspaper. Far from making a grand entrance, Kidman arrived quietly and without fuss. She looked like a school librarian a very pretty one at that or maybe a suburban accountant's secretary.
She wore a fawn cardigan, tan shoes, a bone blouse done up to the collar and a knee-length grey woollen skirt. The Oscar-winning actress, well used to red carpets, walked down an appropriately beige one as she entered court 12C of the NSW Supreme Court.
She spoke in a soft, flat monotone that at times came close to a stage whisper, as she told Justice Carolyn Simpson of being "really, really scared" when she was pursued by Sydney paparazzo Jamie Fawcett in January 2005.
Kidman said she was crouched in the back seat during the drive to her parents' Sydney house when her driver, John Manning, told her they were being followed by Fawcett and another car. "He said that they were driving crazy and that they had run red lights and jumped the median strip," she said. "I was frightened and I was worried about a car accident."
In her statement to police, Kidman said she rang her publicist and told her: "We are being pursued by Jamie Fawcett. I think he is trying to kill us.""I was absolutely terrified and I thought I was going to die," she said in the statement.
Last year a jury found that an article in the Fairfax-owned Sun-Herald newspaper had defamed Fawcett. It found the article conveyed six defamatory meanings including that Fawcett was "Sydney's most disliked freelance photographer" and had behaved in such "an intrusive and threatening manner that he had scared" Kidman.
Fairfax is seeking to establish that some of the defamatory meanings were true. When four court sheriffs escorted Kidman out of court after her 55-minute appearance, she was mobbed by several dozen photographers, including a number of paparazzi.