Actress wins £39,000 compensation after fall in Jeremy Irons's hotel suite

A Spanish actress who fell and broke her pelvis and wrist in Jeremy Irons's hotel room has won £39,000 compensation.

Loles Leon, 57, went back to the married British actor's suite in the five-star Santo Mauro after a night out in Madrid.

They met earlier in the evening on TV show Vertigo, had dinner and went dancing before going to the hotel with a small group "for one last drink".

But the lights in the 61-year-old's suite were not working, and the actress fell down 18 steps. Leon, from Barcelona, spent 36 days in hospital after the incident in October 1999.

She has fought a lengthy legal battle with the hotel since, but yesterday the Supreme Court in Madrid ordered the Santo Mauro to pay her £39,000.

She had demanded £480,000, but the court found the hotel only partially responsible for not having emergency lighting in the suite.

Today Leon, who appeared in Pedro Almodóvar's films Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, told a Spanish newspaper: "As Jeremy is such a gentleman he insisted I went in [to the suite] first. There was a staircase, I went to turn the light on and I fell. Everyone was screaming.

"I could have been killed. I lost several jobs, I still see the physiotherapist, and I have never fully recovered."