LONDON November 21, 2011 (AP)
Actor Hugh Grant said Monday that he believes his phone was hacked by Britain's Mail on Sunday tabloid — the first time he has implicated a newspaper not owned by Rupert Murdoch in the wrongdoing.
Grant, star of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and other movies, told an inquiry into media ethics that a 2007 story about his romantic life could only have been obtained through eavesdropping on his voice mails.
He said he could not think of any other way the newspaper could have obtained the story alleging that his romance with Jemima Khan was on the rocks because of his conversations with a "plummy voiced" woman the paper identified as a film studio executive.
Grant said there was no such woman, but he did receive voice messages from the assistant of a producer friend.
"She would leave charming, joking messages ... and she had a voice that can only be described as plummy," he said.
Grant sued the newspaper for libel and won.
Challenged as to whether he was speculating about the source of the story, Grant acknowledged that he didn't have any hard proof.
"Speculation? O.K. But ... I'd love to hear what the Daily Mail or the Sunday Mail's explanation of what that source was if it wasn't phone hacking."
AP
British actor Hugh Grant
Prime Minister David Cameron set up the inquiry into media ethics in the wake of a still-evolving scandal over phone hacking in Britain. Murdoch shut down the discredited News of the World tabloid in July after evidence emerged that it had routinely eavesdropped on the voice mails of public figures, celebrities and even crime victims in its search for scoops.
Grant is one of a string of high-profile witnesses, including actress Sienna Miller and author J.K. Rowling, who will testify about how they were followed, photographed, entrapped and harassed by tabloid journalists.
The first witnesses Monday were the parents of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, whose mobile phone voice mails were hacked after she disappeared in 2002.
Her mother told the inquiry that she believed her missing 13-year-old was still alive once she reached the girl's previously full voice mailbox.
Sally Dowler said when she could finally leave a message on her daughter Milly's voice mail weeks after the girl disappeared, she shouted: "She's picked up the voice mails! ... She's alive!"
In fact, messages on Milly's phone had been deleted by someone working for the News of the World tabloid while the Dowlers and the police were still searching for the girl, who was later found dead.
The Dowlers said they had been utterly shocked when police told them, much later, that Milly's phone had been hacked.
Sally Dowler said she "didn't sleep for about three nights."
"When we were given that information, it was terribly difficult to process it," she said.
Her husband Bob said he recognized immediately that the information was "dynamite." News that tabloid journalists had targeted not just celebrities but a murdered girl shocked many Britons and triggered a police investigation and media recriminations that are still unfolding.
The Dowlers took the stand together and spoke in quiet, composed voices during their 30 minutes of nationally televised testimony.
They described their shock and anger when a private walk to retrace their missing daughter's last steps was secretly photographed by the tabloid.
ABC
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