Mirren: 'I used to love cocaine'

Rex Features

Dame Helen Mirren has admitted that she used to love taking cocaine during her youth.

The actress, 63, said the only reason she gave up the Class A drug in the early 1980s was that she realised it was funding criminals in South America.

Speaking to GQ, Mirren said: "I loved coke. I never did a lot, just a little bit at parties.

"But what ended it for me was when they caught Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, in the early '80s. He was hiding in South America and living off the proceeds of being a cocaine baron.

"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***ing horrible man in South America."

Mirren added: "Until that moment I had never grasped the full horrifying structure of what brings coke to our parties in Britain."