Shamed actor Noel Clarke has been declared bankrupt just months after he lost a legal battle over allegations of sexual misconduct.
The former Doctor Who star, 50, was ordered to pay at least £3million of the Guardian publisher’s legal costs after he pursued a ‘far-fetched’ and ‘false case’ against the newspaper’s reporting of allegations of sexual misconduct.
Before declaring bankruptcy, Clarke was set to have to pay up to £6m after the Guardian told the court the fee was a conservative estimate of their legal bills.
An initial £3m legal costs fee was due late last year but he filed for bankruptcy in December.
The actor, who lives in Kensington, west London, was formally declared bankrupt on December 11.
Clarke sued Guardian News and Media (GNM) over seven articles and a podcast, including one in April 2021 that said 20 women who knew him professionally had come forward with allegations of misconduct.
He denied the claims, and his lawyers previously said the newspaper had acted as the ‘judge, jury and executioner’ of his career.
GNM defended its reporting as being both true and in the public interest and in a judgment in August, judge Mrs Justice Steyn agreed.
Shamed actor Noel Clarke has been declared bankrupt just months after he lost a legal battle over allegations of sexual misconduct
At a High Court hearing in September, she said Clarke must pay £3m ahead of a detailed assessment into the total costs to be recovered, estimated to be above £6m.
She said: ‘It seems to me that the sum of £3m sought by the defendant is appropriate and no more than what ought to be reasonably ordered in this case.
‘It is substantially lower than the defendant’s likely level of recovery on detailed assessment and so in my judgment, it does allow for a suitably wide margin of error.’
‘The claimant maintained a far-fetched and indeed a false case that the articles were not substantially true, by pursuing allegations of dishonesty and bad faith against almost all of the defendant’s truth witnesses.’
A source told The Sun Clarke knew he would not be able to meet his costs if he lost the case but ‘blindly pushed on regardless’.
Mrs Justice Steyn said a court would assess whether all of the paper’s £6m total legal bill was appropriate and justified if Clarke and the Guardian could not agree on how much he should pay.
Clarke has protested his innocence following the case.
‘For almost five years, I have fought against a powerful media outlet and its extensive legal teams over inaccurate and damaging reporting,’ he said in a statement.
‘These stories started via anonymous emails portraying me as a monster to attract attention and outrage.
‘The goal was to damage my career, and they succeeded.
Clarke is known for his role in Doctor Who as Mickey Smith. He is pictured here alongside actors Camille Coduri and David Tennant
‘I have never claimed to be perfect. But I am not the person described in these articles.
‘Overnight I lost everything, the media outlet didn’t just ruin my life they ripped through my family’s also.’
Clarke, who also starred in the Kidulthood trilogy, found fame playing Mickey Smith in Doctor Who between 2005 and 2010, and worked as a writer, producer and director.
But his career collapsed in 2021 after the Guardian published accounts from several women who had worked with him, alleging sexual misconduct, which he has repeatedly denied.
He sued the Guardian for libel, but following a six week trial a High Court judge found the allegations were substantially true.
Clarke has been contacted for comment.
