Actor Michael Sheen puts up £100K of his money to pay off 900 peoples’ £1M debt

Actor Michael Sheen is putting his money where his mouth is and paying off the £1 million of debt of people who could use some help.

Sheen started a debt acquisition company to help people in Wales with the initiative featured as part of a new BBC documentary, “Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway, the network said.

The documentary will be distributed internationally under the name “Michael Sheen’s Debt Heist,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The project will help shine a light on how banks and finance companies profit from people in debt, using a system that he called “bizarre.” Sheen said he had no idea how it worked until he started the project.

Sheen put up £100,000 to buy the £1 million worth of debt. In American dollars that converts to about $129,000 for $1.29 million in debt, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“The shocking thing is that people have started having to use credit cards, overdrafts to pay for basics, to pay for necessities, rather than luxuries or anything like that, so the debt that I was able to buy included credit card debt, overdrafts, car finance, that kind of stuff,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “You need some help to get through these times. And people are getting into spirals of debt. Once you’re underwater it’s very hard to get out again. That’s why I wanted to do this — to draw attention to the fact that this is going on, and there is a way to change it, there are alternatives, and we need to push to try and make a difference for people.”

A company can buy debt at a lower value than what is owed. That can happen over and over, selling for less each time, the BBC explained.

The company that Sheen started is not in his name, and he will not know who the beneficiaries were, only where they lived and the type of debt that was canceled out.

“I would never know who they are. I still don’t know who they are,” Sheen told the BBC.

He said a planned “few weeks” eventually “turned into two years, because we had to do it secretly.”

Sheen thought about dropping the project until he met with someone at a cafe in his hometown of Port Talbot, Wales.

Port Talbot’s last blast furnace closed five months ago, ending traditional steelmaking in the southern part of the country. The closing meant that 2,800 jobs would be gone, the BBC reported.

“The woman who worked at the cafe we were filming in told me the story of the men sitting on every table in tears who were losing their jobs,” he said. “And I just thought - then, it really hits home. I just through anything I can do [to help.]”

This is not the first time that Sheen has helped Wales. He has self-financed a new national theater after the National Theatre Wales had to close last year after having a £1.6 million, or $1.96 million, funding cut, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“[I realized] if we don’t find a way to reimagine the way forward, it may be a long time — if ever — that we have the opportunity to have a national theater in Wales again,” he said.

Sheen declared himself a “not-for-profit” actor in 2021 and said at the time that he would use the money he earns from his roles for good causes.

He recently starred as Prince Andrew in the television miniseries “A Very Royal Scandal.” He also appeared in the series “Good Omens” and movies such as the “Twilight” saga, “Tron: Legacy” and “Frost/Nixon” according to his IMDB profile.

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