Legendary actor SIR Michael Caine has blasted Britain's drug culture, blaming addicts for the U.K.'s street crime epidemic.
The Get Carter star has been on location in the grittier suburbs of London, filming latest project Harry Brown - in which he plays a vigilante ex-Marine tired of petty gangsters terrorising his neighbourhood.
And after meeting dozens of disaffected locals on set, Caine - who grew up on a tough London estate - believes drugs are the difference between the violence he experienced as a youth and today.
He tells British tabloid The Sun, "What you have now which you didn't have when I was young is drugs. You had alcoholism, people getting p**sed, but you never had the drugs and that is a massive problem.
"We were shooting in Hackney (east London) and someone local came up to me and said, 'Welcome to Crackney!' It was a gentler time when I was young. There were vicious gangsters but they were professional gangsters. They chose who they hit and what they robbed.
"But the drug addicts today have to kill anybody - it doesn't matter who - to get the money, so you get this incredible random violence. When I was young you fought the guy in the next street. But it wasn't so vicious then. We fought with our fists. Now they fight with knives and guns.
"I have now seen it at close hand, very close hand. I was quite aware of it and I come from there, but even I was shocked to find out how bad it is."