'I feared for my life in chase by paparazzi', Nicole Kidman tells judge

Giving evidence in a packed courtroom in the New South Wales Supreme Court, Kidman said she crouched down in the back seat as she was driven to her parents' house in Greenwich, north Sydney.

She said her driver John Manning told her they were being followed by photographer Jamie Fawcett and another car.

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'Upset': Nicole Kidman outside court in Sydney today

"He said that they were driving crazy and that they had run red lights and jumped the median strip," she said.

She said Mr Manning's voice sounded "pretty panicked" and she added: "I was frightened and I was worried about a car accident."

Last year, a jury found an article in newspaper group Fairfax Media's Sun-Herald newspaper in Sydney had defamed Mr Fawcett.

The jury found the article conveyed six defamatory meanings including that Mr Fawcett was "Sydney's most disliked freelance photographer" and had behaved in such "an intrusive and threatening manner that he had scared" Kidman.

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Nicole described a high-speed pursuit allegedly involving photographer Jamie Fawcett, left with wife Anne

Justice Carolyn Simpson is conducting a hearing in which Fairfax has called witnesses seeking to establish some of the defamatory meanings are true and therefore lessen any damages awarded to Mr Fawcett.

Kidman, 40, who is in Sydney working on a movie epic called Australia, today gave mainly short one-word answers to senior counsel Tom Blackburn, who is representing Fairfax.

She said she was terrified of paparazzi pursuing her in Sydney.

"There were so many occasions, I've employed people to protect me now - 24-hour security - I don't drive myself because I'm too scared [of] being pursued," she said.

Describing the night she was driven to her parents' house on 23 January 2005, she said Mr Manning had told her a listening device had been found outside her harbourside Darling Point home, which "deeply disturbed" her.

After a police investigation Mr Fawcett was accused of planting the bug, before charges were dropped.

A lighter moment today came when Kidman was asked to read her police statement, and she began reading it out aloud until the judge told her just to read it by herself.

The actress smiled and tapped her forehead in the style of cartoon character Homer Simpson. She also testified that she and her husband, Keith Urban, 40, were followed by Mr Fawcett during their honeymoon to Tahiti 18 months ago, and again last Christmas, which she said made her "very upset".

Escorted from the court by her legal team and guards, she appeared close to tears. Her father, Dr Antony Kidman, and publicist Wendy Day, have told the court previously that Kidman feared for her life on at least two occasions in which Mr Fawcett pursued her in Sydney.

The case continues.