Meghan 'vilified' by press like Diana: Clooney

Sydney: Meghan Markle is being 'vilified and chased' by the tabloid press in the same way the late princess Diana was, Hollywood superstar George Clooney has told an Australian magazine.

Clooney, a close friend of Markle and husband Prince Harry, warned of "history repeating" itself with the increasingly feverish media attention on the expectant royal couple.

"I do want to say, they're just chasing Meghan Markle everywhere," Clooney told WHO magazine during an interview in Los Angeles.

"She's a woman who is seven months pregnant and she has been pursued and vilified and chased in the same way that Diana was and it's history repeating itself," he added.

"We've seen how that ends." Diana died in a car crash in a Paris tunnel in 1997 while being chased by paparazzi on motorcycles.

Britain's famously ggressive press at first welcomed Markle into the royal fold when she and Harry tied the knot at a lavish Windsor Castle wedding last May, in a ceremony attended by Clooney and his human rights lawyer wife Amal. The mixed-race actress was credited with breathing fresh life into a monarchy sometimes labelled stale and out of touch. But coverage has turned increasingly critical – despite the impending birth of the couple's first child – with reports of palace sniping over her manner.