Mirren: I loved cocaine at dinner parties, but Klaus Barbie put me off it for life
Helen Mirren
By Susan Smith
Monday, 1 September 2008
SHE has been honoured for her acting and won an Oscar for playing the Queen, but Her Majesty may not be quite so impressed with Dame Helen Mirren's latest admission that she used to love taking cocaine at parties.
The 63-year-old star, who made her name playing Prime Suspect's DCI Jane Tennison, has admitted in an interview that she is more familiar with breaking laws than enforcing them.
Dame Helen has admitted that she "loved coke" and regularly snorted it at parties until she was well into her thirties.
However, she stopped taking the class A drug for moral reasons, following the arrest in the early 1980s of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. The actress said newspaper stories about his involvement in the cocaine trade in Bolivia made her realise the full extent of the crime behind the drugs trade.
In the interview in GQ magazine, Dame Helen said she used to take "a bit of cocaine".
"I loved coke. I never did a lot, just a little bit at parties," she said. But what ended it for me was when they caught Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, in the early Eighties.
"He was hiding in South America and living off the proceeds of being a cocaine baron.
"And I read that in the paper, and all the cards fell into place and I saw how my little sniff of cocaine at a party had an absolute direct route to this f****** horrible man in South America. And from that day, I never touched cocaine again.
"Until that moment, I had never grasped the full horrifying structure of what brings coke to our parties in Britain."
The actress also admitted to taking "a bit of dope" when she was younger.
She said: "Marijuana grown in the back garden is not the same (as cocaine], obviously.
"I hated it (marijuana]. Dope always made me feel miserable and paranoid and unhappy. And I woke up one day and thought, 'No more of that, thank you'."
The actress has also previously admitted once trying the hallucinogenic drug LSD. However, she said she found the experience so horrifying she vowed never to touch it again.
The admissions in the men's magazine, including her shoplifting food when she was younger, may shock some of her fans, who consider the Oscar-winner the embodiment of respectability.
She said she is often mistaken for the Queen following her portrayal and while the role had not turned her into a royalist, she has become a "Queenist" instead.
Discussing the Queen, whom she finally met this year, the actress said: "It's a miracle she's never gone mad. She is a remarkable person, who has achieved an amazing thing with a life she neither chose for herself, nor particularly wanted.
"She's never put on weight, never got anorexic, never gone mad…"
The star, who received her honour from Prince Charles in 2003, met the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at Ascot this summer – after turning down an invite for dinner at Buckingham Palace because she was filming.
She said of the monarch: "She said, 'Hello, it's lovely to meet you'. And that was about it, other than horsey chat."
'Mike Tyson? He wasn't really a rapist'
DAME Helen Mirren has waded into potential controversy over the issue of date-rape. The 63-year-old star has spoken previously of being a victim of date-rape herself.
Asked if she reported the incidents, which took place when she was younger, to the police, she told GQ magazine: "No, you couldn't do that in those days. It's such a tricky area, isn't it? Especially if there is no violence. I mean, look at Mike Tyson. I don't think he was a rapist."
If a woman voluntarily ends up in a man's bedroom, takes all her clothes off and engages in sexual activity in bed with him, she has the right to say "no" at the last second, Dame Helen said.
If the man ignores her then it is rape, Dame Helen said, but she added: "I don't think she can have that man into court under those circumstances."
She said of her own experiences: "I was (date-raped], yes. A couple of times. Not with excessive violence, or being hit, but rather being locked in a room and made to have sex against my will."
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