Hugh Grant has said he is “bitter and determined” to get “justice” from the tabloid newspaper industry he has accused of commissioning unlawful activity to invade his privacy.
The actor spoke for the first time since his settlement, for “an enormous sum” of money, with The Sun, on ITV’s Tabloids On Trial documentary.
The legal action was over claims the newspaper had hired private investigators to tap his phone and burgle his house.
Grant says he made the settlement because civil litigation rules mean that even if he had won the case, he could have faced a £10 million legal bill.
He has also made allegations against Mirror Group Newspapers and the News Of The World as part of his Hacked Off campaign group.
Speaking about his allegations against the newspaper industry, he said: “I don’t hold massive grievances against the foot soldiers, or these guys who did this stuff, not against them.
“But I remain bitter and determined to exact justice on the executives who commissioned this stuff.”
Grant told the programme that his anger “isn’t only about phone hacking”.
He added: “There were microphones in window boxes outside the house. There were trackers, microphones dropped into my car.
“There were medical records of me, the mothers of my children and ex-girlfriends – all blagged and stolen out of the NHS.
“And perhaps most spectacularly, the burglary of both my flat and my office.
“In the case of my flat burglary, it was quite spectacular, the whole door had been taken off its hinges, they’d been through the flat and nothing was stolen.
“They’d been there to get information, and a lot of information about the interior and the contents of my flat appeared in newspapers a couple of days later.”
The claims, which have always been strongly denied by The Sun publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN), were originally made in the High Court civil case.
The Sun settled with no admission of liability.
NGN said in a statement to the documentary: “In some disputed cases, it has made commercial sense to come to a settlement agreement before trial to bring a resolution to the matter.”
Welsh singer Charlotte Church also claims she was hacked at the age of 16.
She said: “From the ages of 15 to 21, I had an inescapable abuser, the press.
“My mother was already an incredibly vulnerable woman. Her mental health was really bad. And I’d found her after taking an overdose, and so she was in a really bad way, and that was straight in the press.
“It was horrific. She’s never been able to fully come back from the abuse that she suffered.”
She said she felt “paranoia and anxiety” as she and her family would wonder if there were microphones planted in their home.
News Group Newspapers, the publisher of the defunct News Of The World, paid substantial damages to her and offered “sincere apologies”.
Tabloids On Trial will air on ITV1 at 9pm on Thursday, July 25th.
The documentary will also feature former England footballer Paul Gascoigne and former prime minister Gordon Brown.
