Frost felt 'humiliated' by Mirror story about AA meeting

Actress Sadie Frost has said she was "incredibly embarrassed and humiliated" when the Daily Mirror published a story about her attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

The 49-year-old told the High Court she never spoken publicly about going to such meetings but was advised it was a "safe place".

Giving evidence at a hacking trial against the Mirror Group Newspapers, she said: "Someone quite high-profile took me there and I went there after everyone said it would be safe and anonymous."

But the story, which was the product of phone hacking, was published in the newspaper in October 2005.

Asked by her barrister, David Sherborne, how she felt when she saw it, she said: "I felt incredibly embarrassed and humiliated.

"I was going through what people go through every day - breakdown of a family, divorce. I had a baby, I was breastfeeding, and a baby nearly two. I was not particularly well at the time.

"I was someone trying to put my life back together and every day they were trying to paint a more and more negative picture of me and my family.

"I couldn't take my youngest son to the park for two years because he was photographed. He would cry and I would get panic attacks. I lost two to three years of my life, they wanted me to fail."

She said the paper published private information about all aspects of her life.

"If I went to the doctor or gynaecologist, details would be in the newspaper - there was nowhere I could go that was safe."

Frost told the court it felt "absolutely awful" not to be able to trust close members of her family.

"I needed my loved ones around me. I was very upset, I was a very, very unhappy person.

"Every time I turned to someone to confide in them, it ended up in the newspapers, which added to my distress and trauma."

She branded the Daily Mirror, which has admitted phone hacking, the "lowest of the low".

The trial is to determine what compensation should be paid to victims.

Other stars who have given evidence include Paul Gascoigne, TV executive Alan Yentob, and soap stars Steve McFadde, Shane Richie and Shobna Gulati.