Hollywood actor Michael Sheen has written off £1m-worth of people’s debts, using £100,000 of his own money.

Sheen started a debt acquisition company to help 900 people in south Wales.

It has been documented in a new Channel 4 show called Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway, external, due to air next week – five months after the closure of Port Talbot’s last blast furnace, which marked the end of traditional steelmaking in south Wales.

The show aims to reveal how some banks and finance companies profit from society’s most vulnerable.

Sheen said he did not have £100,000 to “throw around” and therefore wanted the project to be “effective”.

Despite initial doubts, an encounter with a woman in a Port Talbot cafe who shared the story of “steelworkers in tears” losing their jobs, convinced him to keep going.