Dafne Keen was being offered cocaine at wrap parties from the age of 11. 'I was getting offered coke at wrap parties,' the actress said on Michael Rosenbaum's Inside of You podcast on Tuesday, 3 November. 'Like, tiny. Like 11, 12, 13.'
She turned the offers down, having seen enough by then to be put off entirely. 'I was saying no, fortunately,' she said. 'I think as a child actor I witnessed so much of that as a child that I just had no interest.'
By her teens she had found a way to stop being asked. 'I did used to lie as a teenager so that I wouldn't get peer pressured,' she said, and the lie was that somebody had beaten them to it: 'I was like, "Oh my God, no. I'm already so high."' She was drinking soda and called herself 'the goodest goody two shoes ever'.
Her Experience on the Logan Set
Keen, now 21, named no production or person who offered her drugs. She did, however, describe her experience on the Logan set, shot when she was about 11.
There she credited Hugh Jackman with looking after her himself. He gave her 'a lot of really positive reinforcement and a lot of really good advice', she said, and 'he made sure that no one was abusing my hours, that I was having fun on set, that I wasn't aware of any tensions that would've been happening behind the scenes'. She called him 'the best on-screen dad' and said he 'genuinely felt like a sort of parental figure'.
Readers Already Knew the Pattern
The response was less shock than recognition. 'No wonder child actors can get so messed up,' read the most-supported reply on one of the Reddit threads about the interview, and underneath it readers listed earlier cases from memory: Drew Barrymore, Brooke Shields, Lindsay Lohan, and the Olsen twins.
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Others looked at who came through intact, and kept landing on supervision. 'See why Elijah Wood's mom never left his side when he was a child actor,' one wrote. Another went at the adults instead: 'Who are these f*ckers offering coke to kids, they should be in jail!'
What Readers Want Done About It
The strongest calls were for abolition. One of the busiest replies argued child acting should be illegal outright because adults cannot be trusted, and a well-supported follow-up agreed there was no good argument for it when a child who loves acting can do school plays until they turn 18.
The quieter proposals were more specific. One reader suggested every child performer should have someone assigned to them who is not a parent. Another wanted children kept off credits until 18 and barred from premieres, parties and promotion altogether, calling the culture around child actors bizarre and dangerous.
Keen did not call for changes to the industry. She mentioned the cocaine in passing, while explaining why she still does not drink. 'I'll go out, and I'll stay out till 6, but sober,' she said. 'Just for the vibes.' The detail that alarmed everyone else was, for her, something that used to happen at work.
