Sadie Frost has told the High Court that her ex-husband Jude Law had suspected she was leaking stories to the press after articles appeared about them in the Daily Mail during their 2003 divorce.
Ms Frost’s case concerns 11 articles published about her, which she claims were sourced through unlawful information gathering by Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL).
The 60-year-old actor joins Prince Harry, Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish, campaigner Baroness Doreen Lawrence, politician Sir Simon Hughes, and actor Liz Hurley in bringing legal action against ANL over voicemail hacking and blagging private records.
At the time, she was going through a divorce from Mr Law and told the court that she knew certain articles came from conversations that were “hacked from my voicemails, and I know that 100 per cent”.
“One thing about voicemails is you have to choose your words quite carefully,” she said. “I would be very precise about what I was saying. That’s how I knew a lot of the articles were about my voicemails to Jude [Law]."
“To have the man you love think you're leaking stories is awful,” the actress told the High Court. “Our relationship was ruined for many years and it was very difficult to coparent during this time.”
In a heated exchange, Ms Frost said it is “disgusting” that her parents were targeted by Daily Mail journalists, with her unwell father contacted in the hospital and her mother doorstepped at her home.
The actor apologised for becoming emotional as she said the trial “takes you back to such a horrible time”.
She became tearful in the witness stand as she recalled a 2002 incident reported in the press about her then two-year-old daughter finding an ecstasy tablet at a venue in Soho.
“I wasn’t with any friends, I was isolated, holed up at home, distressed and trying to be a good mum,” she says.
The article included a quote she says must have come from a phone conversation, and emotionally told the court: “This has been on my poor girl Iris’s life forever... it’s just so humiliating... it just made me so ill.”
Last week, David Sherborne, who represents the claimants, said that Mail on Sunday journalist Katie Nicholl wrote a draft article containing details about Ms Frost that “not even her sisters or mother knew about”.
He said that in late 2003, Ms Frost had an unplanned ectopic pregnancy with her then boyfriend Jackson Scott, for which she had to have an operation at a private hospital.
Only Mr Scott and “maybe her closest friends” knew about the pregnancy, Mr Sherborne said. He added: “All of this is recorded by Ms Nicholl in the draft article.”
The barrister continued: “How did they know she was treated unless they had access to her voicemail or medical records?”
In a witness statement for the trial, Ms Frost said: “I was going through a divorce which was difficult enough without a story like this coming out.”
She told the court that she was “shocked and appalled” that her medical details had been obtained through doctors. When asked if she could have provided that information herself, she replied: “Oh my goodness, never.”
At one stage in cross-examination, Antony White KC, for ANL, suggested that members of Ms Frost’s family providing information to the press “was likely to encourage” her friends to do the same.
She responded: “I don’t 100 per cent agree with that.”
In a witness statement, Frost said she did not know she had a potential claim against the publisher until 2019, and was “mortified” when she was told her landline had been listened to as it was “a lifeline for me”.
She said: “The stories they wrote violated me, my friends and family, and my children who were still so small, and they made me believe that I could not trust anyone.”
She also denied trying to get her close friend Kate Moss to join her claim against the publisher, stating that was “100% untrue”.
Mr White KC , for ANL, told the court: He said: “Ms Frost’s circle was and was known to be ‘leaky’ in the period when her marriage to Jude Law was in difficulty, and this and their subsequent divorce was frequently being reported in the media.”
He continued: “Members of Ms Frost’s family also regularly provided information to the media about Ms Frost’s and Mr Law’s private lives without any compunction.”
Both Ms Hurley and the Duke of Sussex became emotional in the witness stand when giving evidence last week of the impact the alleged intrusion has had one their lives.
Harry spent around two hours answering questions from ANL’s lawyer on Wednesday in a series of frosty exchanges, before he was asked how the proceedings had made him feel by his barrister Mr Sherborne.
The duke said: “It’s fundamentally wrong to put us through this again when all we wanted was an apology and accountability.
“It’s a horrible experience.”
Sounding emotional and appearing to be on the verge of tears, he continued: “They continue to come after me, they have made my wife’s life an absolute misery, my Lord.”
In court, the duke said the case against ANL felt like a “recurring traumatic experience” and a “repeat of the past”, adding: “I have never believed that my life is open season to be commercialised by these people.”
He later said the “claim that I don’t have any rights to any privacy is disgusting”.
ANL has strongly denied wrongdoing and is defending the claims.
The trial before Mr Justice Nicklin is due to conclude at the end of March with a judgment in writing at a later date.
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