Former child star Tatum O’Neal, has had a long-suffering battle with drug addiction. But after writing a book about her demons with narcotics in 2004, entitled A Paper Life, things started to look up for the star; she claimed she was officially clean.

But on Sunday evening the star was arrested by police in her gritty-chic downtown Manhattan neighbourhood, buying crack-cocaine from a homeless street vendor. When Tatum was searched an unused crack-pipe and cocaine were found in her bag. At first Tatum tried to deny she was buying drugs from the vendor, claiming that she was instead doing research for a film role. Her story then quickly changed, and she told police:

"Today was the first time I was relapsing, but you guys saved me! Can you let me go?"

Yeah, nice try darling, you’ll have to try a bit harder than that. Before her court appearance, on charges of criminal possession of a controlled, she told reporters:

"There’s no excuse for what I did. I lost my Scottish terrier, Lena. That seemed to set me off.”

Hmmm, strangely that excuse didn’t seem to ring-true to the Judge either. But after appearing in front of a magistrate’s court, the actress was eventually released without bail, until her court date on July 28th.

Our spies spotted her on her way out of her NY apartment yesterday, where she revealed: "I'm doing very well. I'm going to an AA meeting. The whole thing is regrettable. What's good in what I did?"

That answer to that question is, not much. Not much at all…