Welsh-born, Hollywood actor Michael Sheen has written off £1 million ($2 million) worth of strangers debts as he continues his philanthropic crusade as a “not-for-profit actor”. 

Sheen, known for his numerous performances in theatre, TV and movies, including Frost Nixon, The Queen, Good Omens and A Very Royal Scandal, used £100,000 ($200,000) of his own money to start a debt acquisition company to help 900 people in south Wales.

The unusual strategy is documented in an a new BBC show, Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway, due to air in the UK this week.

The show documents how some banks and finance companies “profit from society’s most vulnerable” in the wake of the closure of Port Talbot’s last steelmaking blast furnace in south Wales.

Speaking on British chat show The One Show last week, Sheen, 56, explained that people’s debts are often put into a bundle, with a debt-buying company then able to buy those bundles at a lower price that what is owed.

Despite the money being owed by people remaining the same, the companies that own the debt can then sell them for less and less money.

Sheen said he was able to set up a debt acquisition company with £100,000 of his own money to buy £1 million worth of debt because it had come down in value.

Sheen (L) has been a mainstay of movies and TV for more than 30 years. Photo: Prime Video

He said he did not know the identity of people’s debts he paid off, he only knew where they lived and the kind of debt it was.

“I would never know who they are – I still don’t know who they are,” he said.

Sheen said he initially had no idea how debt buying worked, but said “it seemed like a good thing to do”.

Sheen declared himself a “not-for-profit” actor in 2021, pledging to use all his earnings for good causes.

In January he announced was funding a new theatre company to fill the gap left by the collapse of National Theatre Wales.

In 2019 he sold his houses to help raise the £2 million needed to ensure the Homeless World Cup was able to go ahead in Cardiff.

Among his many international roles, Sheen won Best Performer in a Play at the 2023 BroadwayWorld Australia Awards for his performance as Salieri in the Sydney Opera House production of Amadeus.