Hollywood veteran SHIRLEY MACLAINE has jumped to the defence of co-stars CAMERON DIAZ and JENNIFER ANISTON in their war on the paparazzi, insisting invasive journalists and snappers should be jailed.

The screen legend, has recently worked with both leading actresses and she admits she’s horrified by what she has to put up with at the hands of the media.

She says, “They belong in the slammer… They pay these guys so much money that they really can put microphones under beds and tables – to spy on us.

“Then they get a story that’s got an ounce of truth in it, and Time magazine sits up and Newsweek and the rest of them and, before you know it, they’re in the psychology of `You know, they might have something there.’

“I never went through what these kids are going through. People magazine hadn’t been invented, nor US nor OK nor Star nor the Globe. It was only Confidential.

“People who were having illicit affairs but wanted to be written about would go to a table where they knew there was a microphone and it would get reported.

“But what Jennifer has to go through every morning or Cameron Diaz or Nicole (Kidman), these wonderful women I’ve worked with, half their day is spent trying to escape these mothers.”