Lost In Translation star Scarlett Johansson defended her right to privacy in an interview, weeks after her smartphone was hacked and someone posted semi-nude pictures of her on the internet.

“Who doesn’t want to protect their own privacy? Just because you’re in the spotlight, or just because you’re an actor or make films or whatever doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to your own personal privacy,” Ms Johansson told CNN.

“If that is sieged in some way, it feels unjust. It feels wrong.”

Ms Johansson, 26, said that people have asked her how she deals with the invasion of privacy. “It’s an adjustment, but there are certain instances where you give a lot of yourself and then finally you just have to kind of put your foot down and say, ‘No, wait, I’m taking it back,’” she said, in her first comments on the incident.

The pictures of Johansson, star of The Horse Whisperer and Girl with a Pearl Earring, appeared in mid-September and showed her in a state of undress in a home setting.

In one she was holding a towel round herself with face to the camera, her unclothed rear view clearly visible in a mirror, while in the other she was topless. In the first picture she was photographing herself with a smartphone camera, and appeared to be doing so in the second, on a bed.

The FBI is probing allegations that smartphones and computers of several Hollywood celebrities, including MS Johansson, have been hacked.

CNN interviewed Ms Johansson in Nairobi, Kenya, where she witnessed the impact of drought on that African nation with workers for the British humanitarian group Oxfam.