Actress Helen Mirren tells of drug-taking at 1980s parties

UK News

Sep 1, 2008, 7:40 GMT

London - Oscar-winning British actress Helen Mirren (The Queen) has admitted in a frank interview that she used to 'love cocaine' when she was in her 30s but kicked the habit when she found out that a leading fugitive Nazi war criminal made a living from the drug trade. Mirren, 63, told GQ magazine in an interview published Monday that she took the addictive drug until the early 1980s, when she would have been in her late 30s. 'A bit of cocaine. I loved coke. I never did a lot, just a little bit at parties,' said the actress. However, she stopped the habit completely after learning that Klaus Barbie, a leading Nazi war criminal, was found to be making money from involvement in the drug trade. 'It ended when they caught Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, in the early Eighties,' said Mirren, after it was revealed that he lived off the proceeds of being a cocaine baron during his years of hiding in South America. She realized at that point that there was an 'absolute direct route' between 'this horrible man in South America and my little sniff of cocaine at a party.'

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