‘I feel terrible that I suspected friends and family of selling stories about me’

Sienna Miller accused her family and friends of selling stories to the media after journalists obtained intimate information about her by hacking her phone, the Leveson Inquiry has heard.

The actress said she felt “terrible” for even considering that those closest to her could betray her in that way.

She told the inquiry into press standards that she changed her phone number three times in three months after becoming concerned that personal details were finding their way into newspaper stories.

Having switched her number repeatedly, Miller said she was “pretty convinced” the leaks could not be the result of phone hacking and so accused her close friends and family of being the source.

The actress, whose films include Layer Cake, Alfie and Stardust, said a reporter discovered a “very private” piece of information that she had only told to four people, including her mother.

“I am very lucky, I have a very tight group of friends and a very supportive family, and to this date no-one has ever sold a story on me,” she said.

“But it was baffling how certain pieces of information kept coming out and the first initial steps I took were to change my mobile number. And then I changed it again and again, and I ended up changing it three times in three months.”

She added: “Naturally, having changed my number and being pretty convinced that it couldn’t be as a result of hacking, I accused my friends and family of selling stories and they accused each other as well.”

Miller went on: “I feel terrible that I would even consider accusing people of betraying me like that.

“But it just seemed so entirely paranoid to assume that your house is being bugged or you’re being listened to somehow.”

Miller described becoming “constantly very scared and intensely paranoid” and feeling “very violated” by the media intrusion in her life – every area of which she claimed was “under surveillance”.

Journalists and photographers would turn up at places where she had arranged to meet someone on the phone, the inquiry heard, “baffling” her that they knew where she was going before she had arrived. “I felt like I was living in some sort of video game with people pre-empting every move I made,” she said.

The inquiry heard that a photograph of the actress was published in such a way as to suggest she was drunk when in fact she was playing with a child at a charity event.

“There was a very sick child that I was playing with in a corner of the room, who was pretending to shoot me and I was pretending to die,” she said. “The Mirror cut the boy out the photo and said I was drunk.”

Miller sued the newspaper and a “minuscule” apology was printed, she said.