Jude Law has never taken drugs - even prescription ones.

The 40-year-old actor - who plays a psychiatrist who prescribes a disturbing new drug in Steven Soderbergh's thriller 'Side Effects - claims he never even takes headache tablets because his mother believed in healthy living and had banned them when he was growing up.

Asked whether he had ever taken any psychotropic drugs, Jude confessed: ''No. I grew up in a family where I didn't even get headache tablets. My mother wasn't a health freak, but she had strong principles.

''In the 70s, that was just becoming popular: we shouldn't eat this and that, or not watch TV that much. And a dislike of painkillers and pills was a part of it.''

The 40-year-old actor insists he had a very loving upbringing despite tough love being in his household, and he is glad he never had to resort to drugs because of it.

He added in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper: ''My family mainly had this martyr-like north English attitude: don't complain, it will be fine. If you are cold, put a pullover on. And if you hurt yourself, just get up again.

''They loved me very, very much. In England, we call that 'tough love'. I just have no relation to medicine and until now, I have been lucky not to need them for emotional or psychological reasons - fingers crossed!''