Hugh Grant has claimed the Sun burgled his flat and placed a tracking device in his car in an attempt to obtain stories about his personal life.
The actor appeared at the high court on Thursday for a hearing which set out his allegations that the Sun also tapped landline telephones and hacked his voicemails.
In a witness statement to the court, Grant said: “My claim concerns unlawful acts committed by the Sun, including burglaries to order, the breaking and entering of private property in order to obtain private information through bugging, landline tapping, phone hacking and the use of private investigators to do all these and other illegal things against me.”
Grant said that in 2011 his London flat was broken into, with the front door forced off its hinges but nothing stolen. He says the following day a story appeared in the Sun that “detailed the interior of the flat, including the signs of a domestic row”.
Grant said at that time he had no idea who had carried out the break-in: “I had no evidence that this burglary was carried out or commissioned on the instruction of the press, let alone the Sun.”
In his witness statement, the actor claims he was prompted to launch his latest legal claim after being passed information which “showed, for the first time, evidence that the Sun had targeted unlawful activity at me and my associates directly”.
Grant said: “I found it astonishing that the Sun carried out these unlawful acts against me at a time when I was preparing to give evidence to a public inquiry on press ethics. Of course, all of this was concealed from me at the time.”
Grant also alleges that during the 2000s the Sun employed private investigators to break into two properties connected to his film production company and his ex-girlfriend Liz Hurley. The actor claims these burglaries were carried out with “knowledge and approval of Rebekah Brooks who was editor of the Sun at the time”.
His claim is being dealt with alongside a similar legal case brought by Prince Harry. Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, the parent company of the Sun, denies all the allegations and says no illegal behaviour ever took place at the Sun.
A spokesperson for the company said: “The Sun strongly refutes the allegation that it ever commissioned anyone to break into Hugh Grant’s home.”
The court also heard claims about how the Sun allegedly obtained details of Grant’s first child, despite the child’s mother giving birth under a fake name to try to keep it out of the media. Grant alleges the tabloid obtained the fake name using “blagging or … bribery”.
He alleges that a senior reporter at the paper commissioned the “blagging” of private information about individuals including “the child of a former prime minister, a very senior female member of the royal family and victims of terrorist atrocities”.
It is trying to block both cases from going to a public trial on the basis that both Grant and Harry waited too long to file their legal paperwork. They argue that they were slow to file their claims because the newspaper publisher concealed the behaviour of its staff.
Grant has already received a financial settlement in 2012 from News Group Newspapers over phone hacking at its now-defunct News of the World newspaper. This case is a separate claim alleging illegal behaviour took place at the Sun, including when Brooks – now the chief executive of News UK – was editor of the newspaper.
Grant claims he only learned in 2022 that the break-in at his flat had been carried out on behalf of the Sun, after talking to the private investigator Gavin Burrows.
Burrows’s evidence is also being used by several claimants in a parallel series of phone-hacking cases being brought against the publisher of the Daily Mail – although the private investigator has since attempted to recant some of his allegations in that separate set of legal proceedings.
Grant’s witness statement concludes: “I have invested a great deal of time in my campaign work for a better and ethical press … the defendant clearly considers itself above the law and is using the law now in a way I believe it was never intended, that is to further cover up and conceal what it has done.
“I strongly believe that cannot be allowed to happen and that what it has done must be brought to light.”
