Leonardo DiCaprio’s Israeli girlfriend has filed a lawsuit against her country's largest newspaper.

According to the New York Daily News, model Bar Refaeli is suing Yedioth Ahronoth for libel after a report claimed that she was happy to have escaped national service.

She is alleged to have said in an interview: "I am not sorry for not serving in the army because I profited in a big way...Why is it good to die for our country? Isn't it better to live in New York?"

However, her lawyer Dror Arad Alon dismissed the quotes in a letter to the newspaper, saying his client was "wickedly manipulated by [its] reporter and editors".

He went on to say that her comments were disseminated throughout the media, "representing [her] in a ludicrous and poisonous way, essentially abandoning her to public fury for no reason".

Reports last year claimed that the 22-year-old had married an older man one week before she was due to enlist for military service.