Move over Britney Spears; there’s a new recovering wild child for gossip blogs to obsess over. 63-year-old Helen Mirren, who the movie-going public associates with tea and crumpets, has revealed startling insights into her past in a shocking new interview with British GQ.

The Queen star says she “loved cocaine,” but her love for the drug didn’t last long.  Mirren says she ended her dalliance with coke after authorities caught Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, in 1983.

“He was hiding in South America and living off the proceeds of being a cocaine baron,” she tells the October issue of British GQ. “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 absolute route to this...horrible man in South America,” she says.

The Oscar-winner also admits to using LSD but said that marijuana made her feel “miserable and paranoid and unhappy.”

And on a more troubling note, the star revealed that she was date raped “a couple of times” as a teen in London.

“Not with excessive violence, or being hit, but rather being locked in a room and made to have sex against my will,” she says.

And, in a comment sure to spark controversy, she says she always supports a woman’s right to refuse sex, but makes the surprising admission that she’s not always in favor of reporting the attacks.

“I don’t think [a woman] can have that man into court under those circumstances. It’s such a tricky area, isn’t it? Especially if there is no violence. I mean, look at Mike Tyson. I don’t think he was a rapist,” she told the magazine. (Tyson served six years in prison for sexual assault charges in 1992.)

The Dame also reveals that in her youth she was so poor, she used to shoplift food, and adding that while she enjoys “the accoutrements of movie star life,” she still likes to live cheaply by cutting her own hair and wearing dollar-store glasses.

© (c) CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.