Actress Zooey Deschanel says she refuses to pay attention to online trolls after briefly giving up social media this year.

The star of New Girl, who has 11 million followers across Twitter and Instagram, said she stopped having “creative ideas” because of the amount of time she was spending online.

She told the Press Association: “If you spend all your time online, you stop having creative ideas – that’s at least for me.

Zooey Deschanel (Chris Pizzello/AP)
Zooey Deschanel (Chris Pizzello/AP)

“You think; ‘How can my output be this constant thing online?’ Then you don’t start building up ideas and your mind doesn’t work the same way.

“I didn’t do social media until I was in my mid 20s probably. I feel like I probably needed a break to build up ideas.

“I was like; ‘I can’t think of anything to post so then I just don’t post anything’. It feels so good.”

Zooey Deschanel and Jacob Pechenik
Zooey Deschanel and husband Jacob Pechenik (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Zooey, 36, began posting on Twitter last month after a four-month break, saying her hiatus came after “a lot of very strange, tragic, sad, unfathomable things” had happened.

She told Cosmopolitan magazine’s November issue: “I took a social media break because everyone feels the need to comment on everything immediately.”

But Zooey, who has starred in US sitcom New Girl since 2011, insisted she did not listen to personal abuse aimed at her online.

“I just don’t pay attention,” she told the Press Association. “They don’t exist to me. I know whose opinions I value and I only listen to those people. If they have nothing nice to say – unless it’s for some really good reason and I trust that person – I just don’t really listen to them.”

Zooey has voiced a character in the new DreamWorks animation, Trolls, and joined her co-stars Justin Timberlake, Anna Kendrick and James Corden at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Sunday.

Trolls is out now in UK cinemas.