Sienna Miller accused Jude Law of leaking stories

SIENNA MILLER, one of the most high-profile victims of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, has revealed that she accused her mother, sister and then-boyfriend Jude Law of leaking intimate stories about her to the now defunct Sunday tabloid. The actress also said that she planted fake stories to confirm that her voicemail was being hacked.

Miller, who reached a £100,000 settlement with the NotW and is now assisting with the Leveson public inquiry into phone hacking and media ethics, has spoken for the first time about her battles with the Murdoch-owned paper to the Independent's new star columnist Jemima Khan.

The 29-year-old actress says in the interview entitled 'Hacking's heroine' that she was convinced her phone messages had been intercepted "long before 2006". She told Khan: "I changed my mobile number three times in three months. There were clicks on the line. I would pick up the phone and it would drop, there were messages I would never get, coupled with articles [containing private information] coming out every week."

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However, when a string of highly personal stories about her appeared in the paper between 2005 and 2006 she was convinced that only a close friend or family member could have leaked them. Gathering her mother Josephine, her sister and business partner, the designer Savannah Miller, boyfriend Law and her best friend together she confronted them, saying: "Someone in this room is lying and selling stories and one of you has got to admit it."

Miller also planted false stories in an effort to confirm her suspicions that her mobile phone was being hacked. "I started to do tests. I would leave messages on people's phones, like we're going to rent this house or whatever, and it would appear the next day in the papers."

Khan writes that her former boyfriend, Hugh Grant, who was also hacked and has spoken extensively in the media about it, has called Miller "the real heroine and first one out of the trenches, walking towards the machine guns".

Last year Miller was the first person to obtain a judgment against News International over phone hacking although her willingness to settle for £100,000 has been seen by some as capitulation. She told Khan: "I was upset that it was reported as if I had just given up and settled. The real position is that there was nothing left to fight in court. In my case, and my case only, they admitted full, unconditional liability on every part of my claim."

Referring to the Milly Dowler revelations, she added: "When you know they've stooped so low as to hack a murdered girl's phone, it kind of puts all our complaints to shame."