"I loved coke. I never did a lot, just a little bit at parties," said Mirren. "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. 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 fucking horrible man in South America."
Mirren says that from then on she never took cocaine again. "Until that moment I had never grasped the full horrifying structure of what brings coke to our parties in Britain."
Here is more. Here are further controversial claims by Helen.
