Sienna Miller Recalls 'Violently' Interrogating Five People in Her Life Over 'Selling Stories' to Press

Sienna Miller is speaking out about her experiences battling British tabloids.

In the new BBC documentary Scandalous: Phone Hacking on Trial, set to air on BBC Two Thursday, Miller, 41, recalled: "It was completely crazy, the number of stories that were coming out," when describing being a media fixture during the 2000s.

"And the number of accurate stories that were appearing in the press was baffling," she added of how her private life swirled into media fodder during her tumultuous relationship with Jude Law and her pregnancy.

"I remember one photographer saying, 'Have you had your tits done to keep him?' " Miller recalled. "And obviously I was pregnant… it was just awful."

The Live by Night said that after she realized somebody within her personal circle "must be selling stories" to the press, she "sat down the five people in our lives who knew and interrogated them violently."

"I was under such intense pressure," she told the BBC. "I remember my doctor's office phoning me and saying, 'We've sent the records that you'd asked for'. And me saying, 'I didn't ask for any records.' "

Miller, who rose to fame in 2004 with roles in the films Layer Cake and Alfie, has taken civil action against U.K. tabloids a number of times in her career. In 2008, she accepted $26,722 in damages from the U.K.’s Daily Star after the newspaper published a photo that she claimed violated her privacy.

Three years later, the BBC reported that the now-defunct paper News of the World agreed to pay Miller £100,000 in damages after it admitted to hacking her phone. In 2021, Miller received "a major financial settlement" from News Group Newspapers, which owns The Sun and previously owned News of the World as she further pursued claims that media outlets hacked her phone, the outlet reported.

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The BBC's new documentary focuses on a number of individuals who have reportedly received "hundreds of millions of pounds in costs and damages" from News Group Newspapers in recent years. The company shuttered News of the World in 2011 amid the scandal, though it has never admitted that The Sun conducted phone hacking operations.

Back in 2011, Miller recalled being "relentlessly pursued by about 10-15 men almost daily, pretty much daily" for a number of years to an English government inquiry into media ethics.

"I would often find myself — I was 21 — at midnight, running down a dark street on my own, with 10 big men chasing me," she said at the time, per the BBC. "And the fact that they had cameras in their hand meant that was legal, but if you take away the cameras, what have you got? You’ve got a pack of men chasing a woman, and obviously that’s a very intimidating situation to be in.”

At the time, the actress said she at one point changed her phone number three times in three months before she understood that her personal devices were consistently being hacked.

PEOPLE spoke with celebrity criminal defense attorney Duncan Levin, who handles similar high-profile cases, on how people can "safeguard" their private information.

"High-profile individuals need to be ever aware of everyone whom they surround themselves with," Levin tells PEOPLE. "Non-disclosure agreements are one small thing that can protect someone against their personal lives becoming public. We routinely put those together for high-profile and high-net-worth families. A background check is another thing that may seem obvious but you’d be surprised at how many people do not take the effort to do basic criminal and litigation history checks."

Adds Levin, "Most people are not being hacked by the British tabloids, but basic security features like two-factor authentication and strong passwords are another very simple step that people can take to safeguard their information."

The BBC's new documentary Scandalous: Phone Hacking on Trial airs Thursday.