Hilary Duff has joined the growing ranks of celebs who have spoken out about being chased and made to feel unsafe by paparazzi after she was followed for much of the day, Friday, Dec. 20, with her 7-year-old son, Luca, and 1-year-old daughter, Banks.
Finally, she posted about the experience on her Instagram Story, telling followers (via Page Six): "Here I am just trying to get around with both my kids, and I have paparazzi following me everywhere I go. Two grown men. Three of them, actually, one of them is running away across the street. Just following me and my kids to every location I go to."
She added: "In a world where women are getting all these rights, this doesn't seem right to me. At all. All day long."
The "Younger" star then turned the camera onto her son.
"How much do you like that the paparazzi follows you? Makes you sad, huh? You hate it," she asks in the clip. Her son makes a face that shows he agrees.
But as other celebrities have pointed out, there's not much recourse for those in the spotlight who get hounded by photographers angling to make some cash — a desire that led to Princess Diana's death in a car crash after she was chased by paparazzi. (Duchess Meghan, who would have been the late princess' daughter-in-law, is currently suing the publisher of The Daily Mail for breaches of privacy.)
In April, Scarlett Johansson issued a statement to the press after she was chased by paps as she left a taping of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"
Making the case that such dangerous pursuit of stars is akin to stalking, she urged lawmakers to criminalize that kind of behavior.
She described being followed by "five cars full of men with blacked-out windows who were running red lights and putting other drivers and pedestrians at risk so they could follow me to find out where I was staying and subsequently stalk me and my young daughter for the duration of my stay …,"
She went on to point out that, "even after Princess Diana's tragic death, the laws were never changed to protect targets from the lawless paparazzi."
Scarlett went to the police at the time but added, "Women across the US are stalked, harassed and frightened and a universal law to address stalking must be at the forefront of law enforcement conversations. Until paparazzi are considered by the law for the criminal stalkers they are, it's just a waiting game before another person gets seriously injured or killed, like Princess Diana."
Katy Perry made a similar complaint back in 2014, when she was followed while trying to take a walk on the beach in Australia by paparazzi who demanded she give them a bathing suit picture.
Fast forward to 2019 and one of the larger celebrity photo services, Backgrid, sued Katy for $150,000 for posting a photo of herself that had been taken by one of the company's photographers.
A lawsuit filed for similar reasons against Liam Hemsworth by Splash News and Picture Agency made headlines last week.