In her TV interview last night with Sky News, Charlize Theron compared the media intrusion into her private life which she experiences as a celebrity to being raped. While the interview was meant to promote her latest film, A Million Ways to Die in the West, Charlize’s words instead sparked outrage from rape advocates and victims worldwide.

During the interview, Sky News asked the South African actress if she ever Googled herself.

“I don’t do that, so that’s my saving grace. When you start living in that world, and doing that, you start, I guess, feeling raped.”

Charlize was then pressured to answer follow-up questions about whether she really felt invasions of her privacy were equivalent to sexual violence, and her responses did not help her case.

“Well, you know when it comes to your son and your private life. Maybe that’s just me.”

‘Some people might relish all that stuff but there are certain things in my life that I think of as very sacred and I am very protective over them.’

Rape campaigners quickly took to the internet to condemn the actress’s remarks.

‘There’s one thing that’s like rape and that’s rape,” said Karen Ingala Smith, chief executive of victim support charity Nia, which runs the East London Rape Crisis Service. “It weakens what we understand as rape when we use that word inappropriately. It cheapens the aftermath of rape and it cheapens [victims’] suffering. If Charlize Theron spent an afternoon listening to a rape crisis helpline she would understand very quickly that unwanted press attention is very different.”

“It is always disappointing when someone high profile uses that language and turns sexual violence into a metaphor for something else,” said Katie Russell from Rape Crisis England and Wales. “It is never appropriate and it trivialises the experience of sexual violence.”

Charlize’s remarks are especially surprising due to the actress’ past involvement with several anti-rape campaigns. In 1999, she appeared in a South African advertisement under a banner which stated ‘Real men don’t rape’.