The actor Sadie Frost has said she had “a price put on my head” by the publisher of the Daily Mail, as she accused it of repeatedly using information secured from her private calls and sensitive personal records.
Appearing in the high court, Frost said she was horrified by an email suggesting a Mail on Sunday journalist had confirmed to a convicted phone hacker that he was interested in information about her.
Frost is one of seven people alleging that Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) used unlawful information gathering to secure stories about them. Prince Harry has already given evidence, as has the actor Elizabeth Hurley.
The other claimants are Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, who was killed in a racist murder, Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, and the former Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes.
Frost immediately became distressed as she recounted the impact of the private stories about her. She is complaining about 11 articles that appeared from 2000 until at least 2010, as well as two incidents of unlawful information gathering that did not result in articles.
She said she believed there was no way the information in the articles could have been sourced legitimately. She said some were “word for word” from voicemails, which she had worded very carefully.
“There had been a price put on my head,” she said. “The Daily Mail had said they were interested in Sadie Frost.”
The claimant’s legal team are pointing to an April 2006 email from the late convicted phone hacker Greg Miskiw, in which Miskiw recounts a conversation between Frost and her former nanny. He reports a dispute with direct quotes, as well as referring to a child psychologist.
The information was not included in an ANL article. However, the claimants’ legal team says the “verbatim quotations are from the fruits of voicemail interception”. Miskiw also asks a Mail on Sunday journalist: “Are you interested in Sadie Frost? I might have a story about her.” The journalist responds: “Of course we are interested in Sadie.”
In a written witness statement submitted to the court, Frost said: “I was horrified that anybody would do this to my son and because of me. I could not believe how cold-blooded they were to be ‘interested’ in my private dispute and my son’s medical information for sale in a newspaper.
“It was so cruel and horrible; I instructed lawyers. I wanted to find out what else and what exactly had happened.”
ANL’s legal team told the court in written submissions that Frost’s allegations were “wholly without any foundation in the evidence before the court” and based “entirely on spurious and/or discredited information”.
It said Frost’s social circle “was known to be ‘leaky’ in the period when her marriage to [fellow actor] Jude Law was in difficulty”.
The legal team said the stories about Frost were not obtained unlawfully and that the journalists involved secured the information by legal means and sources. It pointed to a freelance journalist who had “a confidential source” among Frost’s friends.
Antony White KC, the lead barrister for ANL, presented Frost with articles that quoted her sister, mother and father, suggesting they had given information to the media. He said this in turn had encouraged members of her social circle to give the press information about her.
However, Frost said her mother would not have given truly private information. She said it was “very taboo to speak to the press” among her friends, and that someone would be “cut out of the group” for doing so.
White accused Frost of being tasked with recruiting her friend, the model Kate Moss, to join the legal action against ANL. Frost said the claim was “100% untrue”.
“I’m not a player in this play,” Frost said. “I’m not part of some plot. I’m an innocent person that was hacked and victimised.”
White spent much of his cross-examination of Frost asking her about when she found out she had a potential claim against ANL. The publisher is arguing that the claimants have waited too long before bringing their claims.
For their legal action to have been filed in time, Frost and the others must prove they could not have known they had a viable case against the publisher before October 2016.
White accused Frost of “pretending” to learn about new evidence relating to her claim from a 2019 Byline Times article, which Frost repeatedly denied. “I’m not going to do something unless I believe it’s 100% the right time to have a case,” she said.
The trial continues.
