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Judy Davis sues Daily Telegraph for depicting her as a child-hater

May 6th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Judy Davis, Woody Allen & Mia Farrow in Husbands and Wives

Actress Judy Davis is suing Nationwide News, publisher of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, for a 2006 article she claims painted her as a child-hater because she suggested that a soccer park be moved for fear that residents could be hit by stray balls. Stray balls in the face? This sounds like the park of George Michaels’ dreams!

The double Oscar nominee and Emmy and Golden Globe winner claims the articles defamed her by “twisting” her words to imply she was a selfish, hypocritical child-hater. Ms. Davis has told a court she was “frightened” of Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper and would not have gone to a local council meeting had she known one of its reporters would be there.

Davis, best known for roles in Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives and David Lean’s A Passage to India, told the NSW Supreme Court today she attended the meeting, about the proposed installation of floodlights at Birchgrove Oval in Sydney’s inner west, to support the local community.

“I was dumbfounded really that The Daily Telegraph would do that to me. I couldn’t understand why they had done it,” the 53-year-old actress told the New South Wales Supreme Court, according to the Australian Associated Press (AAP).

“It seemed to me that they were running a bit of a campaign against me, some kind of vendetta.”

Davis said she had asked the meeting to consider the danger that misfired soccer balls could pose to residents and suggested that a nearby park could be used an alternative venue.

The actor said she was very upset by The Daily Telegraph’s report of the meeting and had decided not to attend her then eight-year-old daughter’s soccer games after the reports appeared.

She also did not take her to school for fear other children would pick on the girl, she said.

“The parents of the girls in her class might not want her to play with them because her mother (according to the newspaper) doesn’t like children,” Davis told the court.

Davis said the meeting was orderly to begin with, but the mood changed when someone from the soccer association stood and launched an “extremely angry and emotional attack”.

The Hollywood star said the comments prompted her to interject, saying: “That’s enough”.

“I said `not only do I have nothing against soccer, I like soccer, my eight-year old daughter has just joined one of your teams’.”

“And maybe the soccer team that she’s just joined… might not want her in the team. They’re very big things in a young girl’s life.”

The Oscar-nominated Davis, who has two children, also said it was wrong to compare her to Hollywood stars such as Greta Garbo.

“I live a very quiet life. I have never encouraged that celebrity cult at all and, really, I’m not that well known,” she said.

“I just do my work and then go home to my family… and I think the Telegraph knows that.”

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