Actress Sienna Miller accused the Daily Mirror of cropping a picture of her playing with a seriously ill six-year-old child to make her appear drunk.
Miller made the claim during her testimony to the Leveson Inquiry this morning.
She claimed the photograph was taken at an annual fundraising ball for a charity for seriously and terminally ill children, for which she was an ambassador.
‘There was a sick child I was playing with in the corner of the room who was pretending to shoot me and I was pretending to die, we were playing a game,’said Miller.
‘Somebody took a photograph and the Mirror cut the boy out of the photograph and said I was drunk.”
Miller said she successfully sued the newspaper but that it printed a ‘miniscule’and ‘irrelevant’apology, and complained that ‘by that time the damage was done”.
‘If anybody in my line of work sees this photograph and hears that I was behaving as they suggested at a charity event it’s just detrimental to my career and my reputation,” she said.
Miller added: “The fact that they knew they were going to get sued and have to pay damages was really not enough of a deterrent.”
The counsel for the inquiry David Barr QC then read out the Mirror’s apology, which said: ‘We said that Sienna’s boozy antics shocked guests at the event and thereby suggested she had behaved in an unprofessional manner.
‘We are happy to make clear that Sienna was not drunk and did not behave in unprofessionally. In fact in the picture Sienna was on the floor playing with a seriously ill 6-year old child.”
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