Oscar winner Helen Mirren: "I was date-raped"

Sept. 2 -- 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?

Helen Mirren poses with her Oscar for Best Actress for her work in "The Queen" backstage at the 79th Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, California, Feb. 25, 2007.Dame Helen Mirren was date-raped twice when she was younger, but never reported the crimes.

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."

(Agencies)