Stars ‘had more interest in money than privacy’

HOLLYWOOD stars Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones were more concerned with making money from their wedding photos than protecting their privacy, the owner of Hello! magazine told a court yesterday.

The couple is suing Hello! for damages after it printed unauthorised pictures of their New York wedding in 2000 three days before rival OK! hit the newsstands with official shots.

Eduardo Sanchez Junco said the actors tried to get the highest possible price for exclusive rights to the shots.

"We were used to raising the price of exclusivity," he said.

"The wedding was offered to various media, including ourselves, not in order to maintain privacy, but solely in order to establish competition which would raise the price for exclusivity."

Sanchez Junco, who is also editor-in-chief of Hello!, told the High Court the OK! deal was "more generous than, or at least equal to" the amount Hello! had offered.

Zeta-Jones, 33, and Douglas, 25 years her senior, claim Hello! breached their privacy and are suing the magazine for £500,000 for loss of income, stress and damage to their careers. OK! had signed a £1 million deal with the couple for exclusive rights to the pictures. Both actors appeared as witnesses in the court last Monday.

Zeta-Jones, heavily pregnant with the couple's second child, said she felt violated after learning that photographers had gatecrashed the lavish wedding at New York's Plaza Hotel, despite huge security precautions.

Sanchez Junco said he would never buy snaps of a "genuinely private wedding." He cited celebrities such as Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Madonna, who had chosen not to reach agreements with magazines for coverage of their weddings.

"The result was much less media interest in their weddings than that attracted by the claimants," he said.

Sanchez Junco told the court he decided to publish the pictures because there was clearly a public interest. "Although they were not of a particularly high quality, I decided to accept them and buy the publication rights, because the wedding obviously was an event that the readers of Hello! would like to see in the magazine."

The case continues.