Jennifer Lawrence addresses nude photo hack: 'It was so unbelievably violating'

'There’s not one person in the world that is not capable of seeing these intimate photos of me. You can just be at a barbecue and somebody can just pull them up on their phone,' says actor

Jennifer Lawrence has said having her nude photos leaked on the internet was a profoundly “violating” ordeal which she is still struggling to process.

The 27-year-old, who was the first of over 100 high profile individuals to have been targeted in the 4chan scandal in September 2014, said at the time it almost felt like a “ransom situation” because the situation was developing so rapidly.

Lawrence, who has starred in Silver Linings Playbook, X Men, and American Hustle, said she decided not to sue because she was more focused on coping with what had happened.

“When the hacking thing happened, it was so unbelievably violating that you can’t even put it into words,” she said on Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter Podcast.

She continued: “I think that I’m still actually processing it. When I first found out it was happening, my security reached out to me. It was happening minute-to-minute - it was almost like a ransom situation where they were releasing new ones every hour or so.”

Lawrence, who was one of the first actresses to be targeted by hackers leaking naked images of high profile women on an internet forum, said it was hard to come to terms with the fact someone could simply pull out the nude photos at any given moment if they so wished.

“I feel like I got gang-banged by the f***ing planet - like, there’s not one person in the world that is not capable of seeing these intimate photos of me,” she said. “You can just be at a barbecue and somebody can just pull them up on their phone. That was a really impossible thing to process.”

“A lot of women were affected, and a lot of them reached out to me about suing Apple or suing [others] - and none of that was going to really bring me peace, none of that was gonna bring my nude body back to me and [former boyfriend] Nic [Hoult], the person that they were intended for."

She said: “It was not going to bring any of that back. So I wasn't interested in suing everybody; I was just interested in healing."

Lawrence, who was the highest paid actress in the world in both 2015 and 2016, said the hacking made her feel like a bad role model for young women.

"I think, like, a year and a half ago, somebody said something to me about how I was 'a good role model for girls,' and I had to go into the bathroom and sob because I felt like an imposter," she said. "I felt like, 'I can't believe somebody still feels that way after what happened.' It's so many different things to process when you've been violated like that."

According to the US Attorney's Office, one of the hackers associated with the attack was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.

After Lawrence was hacked, she argued the incident was not a “scandal” and instead branded it a “sex crime”.

The hack saw naked images of high-profile actors, musicians, models, and presenters leaked on the website 4chan, an image sharing forum, in a hack linked to the Apple iCloud service. The list was predominantly made up of female stars and included Rihanna, Kate Upton, Selena Gomez, Kim Kardashian, Cara Delevingne and many more.