Updated

Actress Kate Hudson has launched legal action over photographs she claims wrongly portrayed her as having an eating disorder, her lawyers said.

Hudson asked the London law firm Schillings to take action on images she said were misleading.

Hudson, 26, has starred in more than a dozen films, including "Almost Famous," "Raising Helen" and "The Skeleton Key." She is the daughter of actress Goldie Hawn.

Schillings said Hudson instructed lawyers "to make legal complaint of those who took and published images of her which circulated widely and prominently in September and October."

News reports said the firm had sent letters to publications including the Daily Mail newspaper, the National Enquirer and the magazines Heat, Closer and Star.

The images, Schillings said, were "used to accompany and illustrate articles which suggested that she had an eating disorder that was so grave and serious that she was wasting away to the extreme concern of her mother and family, and although not stated, of commercial and artistic concern to those who might cast her in movies and choose to use her image to endorse products."

The lawyers will argue in court that Hudson's weight and diet are healthy, but the images portrayed her as dangerously thin with an eating disorder.

An analysis of how the photographs came to be taken, sold and published will form a key aspect to the proceedings, which are expected to be heard at the High Court in London next year.