Dame Helen Mirren has waded into potential controversy over the issue of date-rape, saying she does not feel Mike Tyson was a rapist because he simply carried on when his partner told him to stop at the last minute.

The 63-year-old star has spoken previously of being a victim of date-rape herself.

Asked if she reported the incidents, which took place when she was younger, to the police, she told GQ magazine: "No, you couldn't do that in those days.

"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."

If a woman voluntarily ends up in a man's bedroom, takes all her clothes off and engages in sexual activity in bed with him she has the right to say "no" at the last second, Dame Helen said.

If the man ignored her it was rape, Dame Helen said.

But she said: "I don't think she can have that man into 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.

"Times have changed. I hate young girls going around beating each other up, but I love the fierceness of young girls nowadays, and the way they just say, 'f*** off', because I wish I'd been taught to say 'f*** off' when I was younger.

"I wish I'd had those words in my arsenal of self-defence. Instead, I was polite and didn't have the courage to say that to men who wouldn't accept 'no' for an answer.

"I was pretty naive, I went to a convent school until I was 18, and had never spent a night away from home, or gone to parties, or any of that.

"So I was very innocent when I went to college in London, and I was living on my own. And I found guys were horrible, mean, rude, insulting, and so without feeling.

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