Amanda Seyfried forced to hire bodyguard after Charlie Kirk comments

Amanda Seyfried has opened up about the intense period that followed her comments about conservative activist Charlie Kirk last year.

In an interview with British GQ, Seyfried revealed she had to hire a bodyguard in the wake of the furore.

"I want my kids to be able to feel safe to voice their opinions as long as they're not harmful," the Mamma Mia! star shared. "So I'm like, 'What do I do? What do I say?' And then all of a sudden I find myself with a f**king bodyguard at the airport, and I'm like, 'This is crazy.'"

Seyfried was caught in a firestorm of online criticism after she commented "hateful" under an Instagram post marking the assassination of Kirk, who was 31 when he was killed by a sniper at a speaking event in Utah in September.

"I'm not f**king apologising for that," the Mean Girls star told Who What Wear at the time. "I mean, for f**k's sake, I commented on one thing. What I said was pretty damn factual, and I'm free to have an opinion, of course."

The Emmy and Oscar-nominated actor added that she was glad she had been able to make her position clearer via a follow-up post on social media.

"Thank God for Instagram," Seyfried said. "I was able to give some clarity, and it was about getting my voice back because I felt like it had been stolen and recontextualised, which is what people do, of course."

Amid the initial outrage over her comment, Amanda had explained she both "deplored" the murder of Kirk but was able to feel anger towards his political views.

"We're forgetting the nuance of humanity," she wrote in an Instagram statement.