Lucian Freud: I owed the Kray twins half a million pounds

Lucian Freud has told how he was once up to half a million pounds in debt to the Kray twins because of his gambling habit.

In an interview with the Evening Standard — his most revealing ever — Britain's most renowned living artist says the Krays "forced" money on him to feed his addiction, but he was only able to repay them small amounts.

He once cancelled an exhibition because he knew they would demand more money back if they saw he was earning. The situation "got out of hand", he says, leading to a warning from the police.

Freud spoke to Standard editor Geordie Greig before a major show in Paris next month.

The 87-year-old talks frankly of his nights spent in police cells for fighting, his close relationship with the royal family, and how he used to escort Greta Garbo to nightclubs.

He says: "She was the most famous person in the world at that stage. I was very young, she was in her late thirties. The people in the clubs could not believe it."

In the interview, in ES Magazine tomorrow, he also speaks of his relationship with Kate Moss, whom he met through his fashion designer daughter Bella. She was interesting company and full of surprising behaviour," says Freud, who painted a portrait of the model.

He says he was sometimes annoyed when Moss was late for sittings "only in that way that girls are".

He believes the painting was unsuccessful because photographers waited outside his house, disturbing his obsession with privacy.

The artist also discloses he has four new muses: he is painting his assistant David Dawson; 26-year-old artist and printmaker Perienne Christian; and two restaurateurs — Jeremy King, co-owner of The Wolseley where Freud frequently eats, and Sally Clarke, owner of Clarke's in Kensington.

A grandson of Sigmund Freud, the painter was born in Berlin where, at the age of nine, he photographed Hitler. He spoke no English when his family fled from Nazism to England in 1933.

They became naturalised citizens, he reveals, after the intervention of the Duke of Kent.

Freud's painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping sold for £17.2 million in 2008, making him the world's most highly prized living artist.

But he says he remains ambitious: I work every day and night. I don't do anything else. There is no point otherwise.''

Full interview in ES Magazine, free with Friday's Evening Standard