Turning a Lens on the Paparazzi

Jan. 29, 2005 — -- Nicole Kidman won a restraining order last week against two photographers who she said were staking out her Australian home. Earlier in the week, the actress was involved in a high-speed car chase with the two photographers and investigators recovered a listening device buried in a garden outside her home.

Kidman's father, Tony Kidman, begged the celebrity media for restraint, saying, "She's almost a prisoner in her own house as a result of the people who pursue her for pictures and so on. I would be very pleased if people would just let her get on with her life."

The chances of that happening, though, are slim. Celebrities hate the paparazzi, but the public loves what they dig up.

And with new technology such as long-range camera lenses and camera cell phones, it's becoming much harder for celebrities to hide. It was a cell phone camera that caught Britain's Prince Harry wearing a swastika at a costume party, proving that anyone can snap a candid picture and phone it in.

"We're all paparazzi now," said Andrew Morton, who gained notoriety as Princess Diana's biographer and will host the documentary "Snap! A History of the Paparazzi" on the Discovery Channel Sunday night.

It wasn't until the character Paparazzo showed up in the 1960 film "La Dolce Vita" that we had a name for the photographers who stalk celebrities. In Sicilian, paparazzo means "large mosquito."

This is not the first time Kidman's walls have had ears. In 1998, a paparazzo intercepted a phone call between the actress and then-husband Tom Cruise. After selling the tape to tabloids, he was sentenced to six months in a halfway house.

Just what drives tabloid photographers to chase celebrities day and night? In part, it's the money. Some photos can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars, said Morton on "Good Morning America."

The most money ever paid for a celebrity photo was $5 million for a shot of the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson getting her toes sucked by her boyfriend, said Morton.Right now, the hottest shots are of stars like Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt and Kidman.

But money is not the only reason the paparazzi are so aggressive. In large part, the thrill of the chase drives them, said Morton. Many paparazzi call themselves "cowboys" and "rebels."