Tatum O'Neal arrested for 'buying cocaine and crack'

New York, June 2 : Oscar winner Tatum O'Neal has been caught buying cocaine and crack just blocks from her Lower East Side luxury apartment.

According to sources, the 44-year-old was arrested at was arrested at 7:30 p.m. by detectives from Manhattan South Narcotics.

One source revealed that she even tried to pass off her buy as rehearsal for a role.

"When the police approached, she asked them, 'You know who I am, right?' " the New York Post quotes the source, as saying.

"Then she said, 'I'm researching a part - I'm doing this for a part as a junkie.' Then she said she'd been clean for two years, and that she'd just came out today," the source said.

She then pleaded: "Can't we just forget about this?"

O'Neal, who became the youngest-ever to snag an Oscar, at age 10, for her role in "Paper Moon", wrote in her 2004 memoir "A Paper Life" that boozing and drug-taking was in her DNA.

ANI