Miller says phone hacking made her paranoid

The Associated Press, Thursday, September 15, 2011, 4:52am (PDT)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Phone-hacking victim Sienna Miller says she planted false stories with friends in an attempt to figure out why intimate details of her life were showing up in British tabloids.

Miller, an actress and former girlfriend of actor Jude Law, told NBC's "Today" show in an interview that aired Thursday that stories about her appeared in the newspaper that only her mother, sister, boyfriend and best friend knew about.

"At the time I was incredibly paranoid," she said.

Miller reached a 100,000 pound ($161,000) settlement with the tabloid News of the World, which had hacked into her cell phone messages.

She accused some of the people close to her of selling stories to the press, she said. She'd plant the false stories to see if they appeared in the newspaper, and thus expose a person betraying her, but the false stories never appeared.

Miller said she also became suspicious when it became clear there were a large number of voice mail messages that friends said they'd left and she never received.

"Everything is compromised enormously," she said. "It had a huge impact on relationships, friendships and my career."

Once it became clear to her what was going on, Miller said she was still reluctant to take on Rupert Murdoch's media empire for fear that it could damage her career.

"It was just too horrendous to not expose, and I was really happy that I did," she said.