Catherine, Michael Hate Another Picture

By Stephen M. Silverman

Thursday May 01, 2003 01:00 PM EDT

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Yahoo Buzz
• E-mail

Fresh from their photo battle with Hello! magazine, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas are once again chasing down an unauthorized, unflattering picture.

Lawyers for the star couple have sent a strongly worded cease-and-desist letter to Clear Channel Worldwide, claiming Web sites owned by the Texas company feature a paparazzi photo that shows Zeta-Jones, pregnant, topless and holding a cigarette.

The Smoking Gun Web site has published the letter, in which the celebrity couple accuse Clear Channel of malicious conduct. The Texas-based communications giant -- which is the nation's largest radio operator -- recently posted on Web sites for its 1,200 U.S. stations "surreptitiously taken" photos of the "Chicago" Oscar winner, "heavily pregnant and topless," sunning herself at a private estate, according to the April 30 letter.

As the Smoking Gun points out (the photos don't appear on the site), one of the pictures shows the Welsh-born star with a cigarette -- in defiance of conventional medical advice that pregnant women, especially, should not smoke.

Zeta-Jones, 33, and Douglas, 58, have proven to be litigious in the past, having recently concluded a breach-of-privacy lawsuit against Britain's Hello! magazine for publishing unauthorized photos of their splashy November 2000 wedding.

Last month, the judge in the case ruled partly in their favor, though he has yet to establish damages that Hello! must pay. The Douglases had asked for $800,000.

In a published interview after the decision was announced, Douglas said he was shocked at the scathing coverage his wife had received in the press -- especially in her native UK.

"To see the potshots that have been taken at her -- for whatever reason -- by her own country kind of amazes me ... It's the whole issue of cutting down people who succeed," he told OK! magazine.