Emma Watson and Amanda Seyfried taking legal action over leaked photos

Actresses Emma Watson and Amanda Seyfried are to take legal action after leaked pictures of them appeared online.

Reps for Watson confirmed that photos, which show her in underwear and bathing suits, had been circulated without her permission.

They told the Gossip Cop website: “Photos from a clothes fitting Emma had with a stylist a couple of years ago have been stolen.

“They are not nude photographs. Lawyers have been instructed, and we are not commenting further.”

The pictures appeared yesterday, published on some online outlets, the same day that pictures of ‘Les Miserables’ star Amanda Seyfried suffered a similar intrusion on her privacy.

Whether the incidents are related is not known.

The 31-year-old has issued a cease and desist order to the website Celeb Jihad for publishing nude photos of her that also appear to have been stolen.

Some also feature her in underwear, and with her ex-boyfriend Justin Long.

The letter reads: “Several very private photographs of Ms. Seyfried, either in various states of nudity or in intimate moments with her former boyfriend, have been reproduced and posted.

“These photographs are believed to have been leaked, i.e., wrongfully obtained by a third party or parties without Ms. Seyfried’s knowledge or consent.”

The pictures were released exactly one year after Ryan Collins, a 36-year-old man from Pennsylvania, was charged with hacking a host of Apple and Google accounts belonging to celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence.

Collins was sentenced to 18 months in prison in October last year.

Watson was threatened with the release of purportedly nude photos by hackers following her speech to the United Nations about gender issues in 2014, but was certain no such pictures existed.

“I knew it was a hoax. I knew the pictures didn’t exist,” she said in a Facebook chat on International Women’s Day.

“The minute I stepped up and talked about women’s rights, I was immediately threatened. If anything, it made me so much more determined.”

“I was just raging. It made me so angry that I was just like, ‘This is why I have to be doing this!’ So if anything, it actually, if they were trying to put me off it, they did the opposite.”

Read more:
Watch the first trailer for Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver
What we learned from the Wonder Woman trailer
Ridley Scott has ideas for a Gladiator sequel