What do actors actually snort when they take coke on screen?

Reading time: 2 min — Spotted on Hopes and Fears, New York Post

Cinema loves drugs. Hallucinations, pleasure, bad trip, rock'n'roll atmosphere, broken destinies, traffic of all kinds... These are the perfect ingredients for a slew of cult films, from Trainspotting to Requiem for a Dream via How High and Very Bad Trip.

On screen, it's easy to cheat when it comes to using a fake placebo pill, rolling a fake joint or pretending to inject an intravenous drug. But how to pretend to snort cocaine? Did Leonardo DiCaprio have to prepare to ingest kilos of flour to shoot The Wolf of Wall Street? Did Mia in Pulp Fiction have a mini coke vacuum cleverly tucked up her sleeve?

"It's like baking a cake, there are lots of different recipes," summarizes the New York Post. If it's laid on a table or cut in lines, the film crew is just going to use a combination of powders. "It's usually cornstarch, but you can add a little baby powder to it, as it gets sticky and heavy quickly," says Gillian Albinski, props man for Homeland.

Avoid powdered sugar and flour

But if the actors have to snort it, that's different. “You can't use powdered sugar because it gets sticky. And you really can't use flour because it gets wet or lumpy,” says Kenn Finn, a props man interviewed by Hopes and Fears.

Inositol is easily absorbed through the sinuses and does not affect the vocal cords, it is a good choice for musicals

Natalie Kearns

How to do? “I always use powdered lactose, answers Mychael Bates, another props man interviewed by the New York Post. You can really snort it, it won't do you any harm. It's just milk."

Those who are lactose intolerant will ingest inositol, a B vitamin compound, instead. It is often cut with that”, specifies Ken Finn.

Risks of bronchitis

Natalie Kearns, a props man for many years, also uses inositol: "It's easily absorbed through the sinuses and doesn't affect the vocal cords, so it's a good choice for musicals."

But no matter the substance, snorting multiple lines of fake cocaine over multiple takes can leave actors feeling congested. Jonah Hill, on the Wolf of Wall Street set, even ended up contracting bronchitis. To avoid this, it is possible to coat the inside of the straw with Vaseline, so that some of the powder remains stuck there.

Blame it also on the directors and their delusions of grandeur. On screen, the powder comes in bagfuls, and the actors could draw the map of the United States with the unrealistic amount of stuff they ingest through a straw.