This movie star has paid off $1.3 million in debts for his hometown: “People are hurting”

Hollywood star Michael Sheen has written off seven figures of debt owed by people in his native Wales, as part of a campaign that aims to bring about change in the credit industry in the U.K.

Sheen, an actor best known for his roles in movies such as The Queen and Frost/Nixon, paid £100,000 ($130,000) out of his own pocket to buy £1 million ($1.3 million) of debt belonging to nearly 900 people in and around Port Talbot, the Welsh city where he grew up.

Having purchased the debts, the 56-year-old then cancelled them - in a move that is at the center of his bid to raise awareness of the dangers of the credit industry in Britain.

“People are hurting”

The BAFTA-nominated actor’s efforts are chronicled in a new documentary, Michael Sheen’s One Million Pound Giveaway, which aired on U.K. television on Monday.

“People are hurting,” Sheen says during the Channel 4 documentary, in which he confronts the effects on Port Talbot of the decline of the city’s steel industry.

“It’s bizarre - I had no idea it happened”

In an appearance on the BBC’s The One Show earlier this month, Sheen explained how he was able to establish a debt-acquisition company that purchased Port Talbot residents’ debt at a fraction of its actual value.

“When I realized I could do this - that I could get £1 million of people’s debt and just write it off - it seemed like a good thing to do,” Sheen said.

“Essentially, people’s debt gets put into bundles, and then debt-buying companies can buy those bundles. And then they can sell it on to another debt-buying company at a lower price.

“So [...] even though the amount the people owe is still the same, the people who own the debt can sell it for less and less money.

“So I was able to set up a company, and for £100,000 of my own money, buy £1 million worth of debt.

“It had come down in value like that, because they [other debt-acquisition firms] don’t see as much chance to get the money back, or whatever the reason might be. It’s bizarre - I had no idea that this happened.”

Sheen told The One Show that the process of creating a company that could purchase people’s debts was so protracted that he actually came close to giving up.

However, a defining experience during the shooting of his documentary spurred him on to see the project through.

“We were filming one day in Port Talbot, in a café down by the docks, and I was thinking maybe I couldn’t keep going with this anymore,” Sheen said. “And it was the day that the last shipment came in for the steelworks in Port Talbot.

“And the women who worked at the café that we were filming in told me the story of men sitting at the table just in tears that they were losing their jobs. And then it really hit home, and I thought: ‘Well, anything I can do...’”

Sheen eyes “change that will help millions”

Sheen uses his documentary to urge the U.K. government to pass legislation that would force major banks to make it easier for low-income households to access affordable credit, in the process preventing people from turning to high-interest payday loan companies and loan sharks.

“Helping the 900 was hopefully a way to help those 900 people, but also to get to creating change that will help millions,” Sheen told an interview with Channel 4.

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