Michael Sheen pays off £1m of neighbours’ debts in his hometown in Wales

â??It couldnâ??t be more real, how much people are hurtingâ?? said the Welsh actor

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Michael Sheen has paid off £1m worth of debt for neighbours in his local community of Port Talbot.

The move was part of a two-year project to highlight issues with the current credit system, as part of forthcoming documentary, Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway.

The 56-year-old Good Omens star purchased the credit for £100,000 from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and wiped off debt to the value of £1m, to help over 900 people in south Wales where he grew up.

In one scene, Sheen, who has been advocating for the impact of debt on people’s lives for years, talks to a woman in a cafe who tells him locals had been “crying at these tables” following the closure of a blast furnace. With steelworkers losing their jobs, Sheen said he “can’t walk away”.

“We’re sitting in a cafe at the moment, with steelworks right behind us, and the ladies who work here, before we started filming, told me that tomorrow is the last ship, the last boat coming into the dock here to deliver stuff to the steelworks,” the actor says in the clip.

“And they’ve described people sitting in here just crying at these tables. So it couldn’t be more real, how much people are hurting. It’s made me realise that this is … you’ve got to give it a chance, you’ve got to give it a go, and maybe this programme will make a tiny difference, or maybe it won’t, but I can’t walk away from it now.”

He sets up a debt-buying business after working with Roland Roberts, a former director of a debt collection company. In the documentary, Sheen meets Labour MP Lloyd Hatton to learn more about the proposed Fair Banking Act. He also meets former prime minister Gordon Brown, who says he will help him have “the kind of meetings that are necessary” to make change.

Star announced he would be a ‘not-for-profit’ actor in 2021 (Getty Images )

Born in Newport, Sheen moved to Port Talbot when he was eight years old. Moving out of the area to make his career, the star returned home over ten years ago and has been living there ever since. Earlier this year, he launched the Welsh National Theatre, hoping to “usher in a new dawn”.

His mother was a secretary and his father a factory middle manager, but Sheen said he was too “obsessed” with his career when he was younger to notice the impact of policies by Margaret Thatcher, which impacted working-class communities, he told The Guardian.

Sheen announced he was a “not-for-profit” actor in 2021, based on his commitment to reinvest his earnings to social causes. Part of the change came when he returned to Port Talbot over a decade ago to perform in The Passion.

“I was learning about what was going on that I was totally unaware of, growing up,” he said of the experience, after coming into contact with hundreds of locals.

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