Michael Sheen has cleared £1m debt for 900 people.
The Welsh star has used £100,00 ($226,000 NZD / 205,000 AUD) of his own money to set up a debt buying company to help 900 people in South Wales get out of debt.
Sheen’s charity project has been documented in a new Channel 4 show called Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway.
The show, which aims to expose how some finance companies and banks profit from society’s most vulnerable, comes months after the last blast furnace in Port Talbot closed, marking the end of traditional steelmaking in South Wales.
During an appearance on the BBC’s The One Show, Sheen revealed that he decided to pursue his goal of helping people out of debt after meeting a woman in a Port Talbot cafe who told him about the steelworkers who had lost their jobs.
“I didn’t have £100,000 to throw around, so I wanted it to be effective,” he said, explaining his reasons for starting a debt buying business.
“But when I realised I could do this, I could get a £1 million pounds worth of people’s debt and write it off, it seemed like a good thing to do.”
Explaining how the debt scheme works, Sheen said that people’s debts are bundled together and the debt buying company can then buy these bundles at a lower price.
Sheen added that he had to keep an “arm’s length” from the company, which was not set up in his name, and that he did not know the identities of the people whose debts he was paying off.
The news comes just two months after the Twilight actor, who has previously described himself as a “not-for-profit” actor, announced he was funding a new theatre company following the closure of the National Theatre Wales.
However in a previous move Sheen has revealed his generosity left him in “massive debt” and had “nothing left” after funding the 2019 Homeless World Cup after previous funding fell through.
The star sold his houses in Los Angeles and Wales to make sure the Homeless World Cup, which gathered together 500 players from 50 countries, all of whom had experienced homelessness, went ahead in Cardiff.
“At first, I thought it was the end of everything,” he told the Guardian. “I mean, I had nothing left. Not just that, I was in massive debt – I’m still paying it off.”
It was an unsettling time for the star and his partner, Anna Lundberg, who was pregnant with their first child.
“Anyone would have been in their rights to go, ‘Sorry, I didn’t sign up for this.’ It could have gone either way, but I’m very glad that it went the way it did,” he says. “I just couldn’t have got through that without her.”
While the approach occasionally gives him pause when he sees other actors successes, he says he has learned a lot. “I look at what they’ve got, and I haven’t got that. But I made a choice, and I’m very happy with the choice I made.”
