Dame Helen Mirren was date-raped twice when she was younger, but never
reported the crimes. The 63-year-old actress - who won an Oscar for her
performance in "The Queen" - revealed she was too scared to say no and forced to
have sex. Helen said: "I was date-raped, yes.
A couple of times. Not with excessive violence, but rather being locked in a
room and made to have sex against my will. If a woman voluntarily ends up in a
man's bedroom with her clothes off? It's such a tricky area, isn't it?
Especially if there is no violence. I think she has the right to say no at
the last second. But I don't think she can have that man in court under those
circumstances. "I guess it is one of the many subtle parts of the men/women
relationship that has to be negotiated and worked out between them. "I was
polite and didn't have the courage to say that to men who wouldn't accept 'no'
for an answer. I was very innocent when I went to college in London. I went to a
convent school and had never spent a night away from home or gone to parties or
any of that.
Helen, who is married to American director Taylor Hackford, also revealed she
used to regularly take the class A drug cocaine when she was in her 30s.
She decided to quit when Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was uncovered as a
drugs baron. When she was asked if she had ever taken any illegal substances,
Helen added to GQ magazine: "A bit of dope when I was younger.
A bit of cocaine. 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.
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***ing 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."