After getting busted on Manhattan's Lower East Side for buying cocaine and crack a few blocks from her luxury apartment building, former child star Tatum O'Neal explained to police, "I'm researching a part.... I'm doing this for a part." (She later changed her tune, asking the detectives, "Can't we just forget about this?" They couldn't.) Her flimsy excuse is just the latest in a long line of flimsy excuses celebrities have proffered to authorities after being caught red-handed with illegal substances in equally absurd predicaments. A list of our recent favorites follows: