Actress Fleeing Paparazzi Hits Car

Actress Scarlett Johansson hit a car carrying a family while trying to elude paparazzi who had followed her from her Hollywood home to the parking lot of Disneyland, her publicist said Monday.

No one was hurt in the accident, which occurred just before 2 p.m. Thursday. Anaheim police said they were aware of the incident but did not have details.

Johansson, 20, who has starred in such movies as “Lost in Translation” and “The Island,” was driving a Mercedes and was accompanied by two friends when she noticed four SUVs following her down Interstate 5, said her publicist Marcel Pariseau.

Johansson paid the $10 fee to enter the Disneyland parking lot but was still being followed, he said. As the actress tried to get away from the vehicles, which apparently were carrying paparazzi, Johansson swerved into another car, he said.

“[The] four SUVs surrounded the accident,” Pariseau said. “She saw one photographer come out of his car and start snapping away.”

Arnold Cousart, co-owner of JFX Direct photo agency, acknowledged that two of his photographers had been following Johansson for four days and had tracked her to Disneyland, along with at least one other photographer from a rival agency.

But he said that his photographers had nothing to do with the collision in the Disneyland parking lot, in which Johansson’s car clipped the right side of a Daihatsu containing a woman and her two young daughters.

“Our photographers were about a block [behind her] when the collision occurred,” Cousart said. “She was basically by herself .... There wasn’t any car behind her closer than 40 yards.”

The incident comes two months after a celebrity photographer was arrested on suspicion of hitting actress Lindsay Lohan’s car near the Beverly Center mall. That case and others have raised concerns about what some stars contend are the increasingly aggressive actions of paparazzi trying to get candid shots.

In response to the Lohan case and others, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has opened investigations to determine whether the paparazzi are conspiring to create dangerous situations for celebrities so that they can get more dramatic pictures.

Anaheim Police Department Sgt. Rick Martinez said his agency is not investigating the Johansson accident because no one filed a police report. California Highway Patrol officers responding to the accident did not take a report because the crash occurred within the city of Anaheim, a CHP spokesman said.

Cousart said the photographers should not be blamed for the Disneyland accident, but that they are being blamed isn’t surprising.

“If the weather’s bad, they’d blame paparazzi,” he said. “Ever since the Lindsay Lohan thing, it’s been like this.”

Pariseau said Johansson has been hounded by paparazzi since her Aug. 13 return from London, where she had been working on a Woody Allen film.

“She has not been left alone since she has come back to the states,” Pariseau said. “At least two or three of them had been camping outside of her house for five days.”

Johansson doesn’t plan to seek an investigation into the incident but has had enough, he added.

“She’s frustrated; she’s left Los Angeles,” he said. “She can’t deal with it anymore.

“She would hope that some legislation would get passed in the future to avoid these situations.”