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Alison Pill in a scene from The NewsroomMelissa Moseley

Of all the female celebrities to have a topless picture circulating online, Alison Pill would have ranked low on the list.

Even more startling, the fresh-faced Toronto-born actor posted it herself to Twitter, before quickly realizing her mistake.

Shortly after removing the image, Pill tweeted: "Yep. That picture happened. Ugh. My tech issues have now reached new heights, apparently. How a deletion turned into a tweet... Apologies."

Gawker jumped on her error yesterday afternoon, posting the original picture that shows her lying on a bed, positioning the camera above her chest.

Indeed, it's the kind of a goofball move that might easily have been scripted into The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin's snappy and vaguely sexist HBO series in which Pill plays an associate producer named Maggie Jordan.

In 2005, Pill revealed her breasts in Dear Wendy, a movie co-starring Jamie Bell (of Billy Elliot fame). But that momentary flash was for the sake of a role; this picture was intended to be private (presumably intended for her fiancé, Jay Baruchel).

Anyway, she looked cute – less celebrity sexpot than bookish babe. Certainly there was no need to apologize.

A quick scroll through Pill's tweets reveals that the photo snafu was not her first technical difficulty. "That photo post didn't work at all, did it? Ugh. Stupid compooters," she tweeted, just last Thursday.

But spare the blond jokes, please (anyway, her hair is more strawberry-hued).

Pill, 26, is an engaging voice on Twitter, voicing her pithy opinions on politics, Canadian finance and the Montreal shooting (in French, no less) and dressed-up dogs.

This morning, she linked to the non-profit journalism site ProPublica's coverage on Libya in addition to retweeting a quotation about cats from Mark Twain. Since the incident, Ms. Pill has gained more than 6,000 new followers on Twitter – which ultimately says more about us than it does about her.

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