Actor RAY LIOTTA is raging about press reports that he used morphine on the set of HANNIBAL.

Liotta, whose character is dosed up with the drug in the shock finale of the new movie, is said to have taken morphine to get into character - an allegation he strongly refutes.

He says, "I don't know what that drug is, and actually you couldn't use it - from what I gather, it really slows you down and what we wanted in the scene was to get pepped up and have fun with it, to take away from the tension and the grossness of what's going on."

American tabloid THE STAR was instructed not to run a story about Liotta's thoughts on morphine, because it was felt his comments might be misconstrued. He adds, "The one thing that bothers me about it is I consider myself an actor. I don't go killing people when I have to kill somebody. If I have to kiss I don't practice kissing them before. "I guess it gets misconstrued and people look for something that's not there. I didn't know how to do the scene, and I didn't even know if that was a drug." (KL&RXM/WN/KW)

Source: WENN