Paul Mescal tells fan to ‘take your hand off my ass’ in ‘creepy’ encounter

The Oscar-nominated star was posing for a photo with a female fan when she “put her hand on my ass,” he revealed to ES Magazine.

“I thought it was an accident,” the Maynooth native said, recalling that he moved out of the fan’s grip “but the hand followed.”

"I remember tensing up and feeling just, like, fury.

"I turned to her and said, ‘What're you doing? Take your hand off my ass’.

"The last thing I want to do, is call somebody out in front of the theatre - it's uncomfortable for everyone involved - but it was really not okay. It was so gross, creepy.”

Mescal shot to fame after starring in TV sensation Normal People, and is now a household name as he competes with fellow Irishman Colin Farrell to take home the Oscar for Best Actor.

He admitted that “97 pc” of fame is “really nice” but 3 pc is somebody, like, grabbing your ass.

"Like I had this woman who said she had a naked picture of me, a screenshot from the show, as the wallpaper on her phone,” he explains.

"And it was mad to me — like, she wasn’t doing it to be incendiary, I think she was genuinely trying to tell me she was a big fan but it just felt very weird. I didn’t like it.

“(When Normal People came out) It was like, ‘This is f***ing crazy.’ Now I’m a bit more comfortable with it. I realised, like, this can consume me and I can be pissed off with every person who has a naked picture of me stashed somewhere or I can just let it go. It’s the internet.

"The internet is this evil f***ing entity and it has so much power but it’s an exhausting hill to try and die on because you’re not going to win.”

The star has been open about how he shot to super stardom in the past, recently admitting his BAFTA nomination for Aftersun felt “slightly absurd.”

“I don't think anybody or even I was expecting this,” he said.

“I always knew that I was willing to work hard. From the space, from the time of graduating from drama school to now, hasn't been an awfully long time.

“But last Tuesday, when the nominations came out and the BAFTA’s the week before, something felt slightly absurd about it all.

“Mum and dad, like (there was) this stuff going on at home that is difficult and this has given my family a very welcome respite. I never thought that my job, something that I love very dearly, could do (that).”