Moving beyond acting, multiple romances, and a family reconciliation… with boundaries. Drew
Barrymore has had no shortage of drama in her life. Has she finally moved beyond it,
or is she still getting caught up in controversy? Keep watching to find out.
Drew Barrymore is one talented branch of a famous showbiz family tree,
beginning with her great-grandfather, Maurice, who began acting 100 years before Barrymore was born.
Barrymore never met her grandfather John, the notable Shakespearean actor,
nor great aunt Ethel and uncle Lionel, who was most famous for his role as Mr.
Potter in It's A Wonderful Life. Barrymore's own father, John Drew,
was also an actor, though his alcoholism got in the way of a successful career.
Her mother was also an aspiring actress, though she came from more humble roots. Named Ildiko
Jaid, she was born in West Germany in a displaced persons camp for Hungarian refugees during World
War II. She came to America and tried to start her acting career, but met John Drew at 21. They were
together for five years and divorced while Jaid was pregnant with Drew. Though the two parents
hailed from very different backgrounds, they brought a similar chaos into their child's life.
Though Drew Barrymore holds the illustrious family name, she had little contact with her father.
Her parents divorced before she was born, so the future actress didn't meet her dad
until she was 3 years old. In 2001, she revealed to 60 Minutes Australia:
"Did I do something wrong that my dad doesn't want to be around me, am I such a repellent person?"
And the meeting wasn't filled with hugs. Instead, her drunken father stormed into their apartment
only to grab a bottle of tequila. Barrymore always wanted the love and support of her father,
but he reportedly wasn't capable of it. Once when John was babysitting, he allegedly decided
to show Barrymore his new karate moves and was said to have punched her until she cried out:
"Why do you always cause so much pain?"
John reportedly retorted that she didn't really know pain
and held her hand over a burning candle until she started to cry.
Drew cut off all contact with her father for a number of years. But as she grew into an adult,
she would visit him on occasion while giving up any hope of having a real relationship.
In 2001, John was diagnosed with cancer and Barrymore reconciled with him. She even took
responsibility for his hospice care. Though he remained the difficult person he always was,
according to Drew's memoir, Wildflower, he took a moment while visiting at Joshua Tree to tell her:
"You were born perfect."
He died in 2004.
By the time Drew Barrymore auditioned for Steven Spielberg at age 6,
she was already a pro. Her mother took her to audition for a puppy food commercial,
and Drew landed the role at only 11 months old.
"A friend suggested that she take me on this audition when I was eleven months for
a puppy chow commercial."
She consistently got roles and was called in to audition for Poltergeist.
As Spielberg looked on, Barrymore charmed everyone with her adorable personality and
various stories. She admits that in the audition, she told Spielberg she was a
drummer in a rock band and a burgeoning chef. Barrymore revealed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show:
"I lied my face off. I told him I was in a rock 'n roll band. I was a drummer,
of course, because drummers are the coolest, and that I was a cook."
Spielberg knew Barrymore was something special, but didn't think she was the right
fit for Poltergeist. He promised he'd call her in for another film, but jaded at age 6,
Barrymore guessed it was probably just a Hollywood brush-off. But Spielberg stuck to his word and
after many callbacks, Barrymore landed the role of Gertie in the now iconic movie E.T.
After the success of E.T., Drew Barrymore's mother, Jaid, quit her job and became her
daughter's full-time manager. Jaid seemed to like the spotlight just as
much — if not more — than Drew. She wanted to take advantage of the new found fame,
so Jaid took Barrymore to the infamous Studio 54 nightclub when she was only 9 years old.
"I didn't realize that until I was nine and I started casually drinking, and realized"
"Where would you get alcohol from at nine?"
"Oh parties, friends."
Jaid and her daughter hit the club scene hard.
Drew loved being the youngest at the party. She described clubs as being:
"Disneyland for adults, only I got to be a part of it."
At Rob Lowe's 20th birthday party, Jaid abandoned her daughter at the nightclub,
which is where Drew had her first beer and make-out session. The underage party girl
regularly drank and smoked— and by age 12, she was addicted to cocaine. Jaid once said:
"When we went out, it was always the two of us together.
It wasn't ever Drew going off to a party while I stayed home
and knitted. [...] This was still a period where I considered us an inseparable team."
Drew's problems were quickly spinning out of control,
and it took a drastic event to get her life on the right track.
After becoming a drug addict as a young teen, Drew Barrymore hit a low point and attempted
to take her own life at 13. While Barrymore's mother claimed that she did it for attention,
it was an obvious cry for help from a struggling child.
Jaid sent her daughter off for 18 months to a mental hospital to get clean
and clear her head. Barrymore said she hated it then but now is grateful for the care.
Speaking about her time in recovery, Barrymore revealed:
"It did give an amazing discipline. It was like serious recruitment training and boot camp,
and it was horrible and dark and very long-lived, a year and a half,
but I needed it. I needed that whole insane discipline. My life was not normal."
According to her book, Barrymore finally had a little structure in
her life and she didn't want to go back to her addictive ways.
"You know 'cause I want to stay sober so bad. And you know,
there is a possibility that I could slip again."
When her hospitalization came to an end, doctors suggested that Drew Barrymore make a big change
to stay clean by becoming an emancipated minor. Jaid's guardianship was so unstable
that experts thought the 14-year-old would have a better chance on her own.
"And she did have coke when she was about 11 or 12 and she did have some drinks, uh,
with the people at her school, because they were all doing it, the whole school was doing it."
So Barrymore filed for a divorce from her mom. And Jaid was completely supportive of the action. The
teenage Barrymore stood in the court asking to be legally considered an adult, and the emancipation
was granted. Barrymore and Jaid hugged in the courtroom, then went their separate ways.
Barrymore was grief stricken knowing that she had to leave her mother but knew it was inevitable.
While officially an adult, Barrymore quickly realized she didn't know how to clean,
cook, or even do laundry. She hadn't even finished school. But Barrymore taught herself. She devoured
books on every subject, learned how to take care of herself, and even worked in a coffee shop since
the industry was reluctant to work with her after the drug addiction scandal. Even though she was
thrown into the world so young and so unprepared, she slowly found a steady life for herself.
Drew Barrymore eventually started getting work again, returning to the public eye
at 18 with the film Poison Ivy, where she played a seductive, evil teenager.
She took risqué roles and adopted a kind of "wild child" persona in the press in order to
get past her child acting days. And Barrymore's real love life did nothing to temper that.
At 19, Barrymore married Jeremy Thomas after a very brief courtship in 1994. The marriage was
a surprise to the media, and it didn't help that Thomas was a 31-year-old bartender. But after
only two months, the couple split up. In 1998, she dated Luke Wilson for a year after starring
in Home Fries together. Shortly after their breakup, the actor began an unusual courtship with
comedian Tom Green. Though it seemed an unlikely couple, they were married for two years before
an amicable divorce in 2001. After her second divorce, Drew had her longest relationship yet,
with The Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti. They were together for five years and though they never
married, it was obvious their relationship was incredibly close and full of love.
Drew Barrymore has always made a splash on screen — whether in character,
or as herself. She still holds the record for youngest star to ever host Saturday Night Live,
which she accomplished at age 7. That's four years younger than the next youngest host,
Macaulay Culkin, who made his debut at the ripe old age of 11.
But her most memorable late-night moment was in 1995, when she was a guest on Late
Show with David Letterman. Barrymore dished that the week before Letterman,
she did a performance art character named Lolita at a club on the Lower East Side,
which involved strip teasing on stage. When Letterman asked about her escapades,
Barrymore decided to show rather than tell. She jumped up on the desk and started dancing.
The crowd went crazy as she turned towards Dave, lifted up her shirt, and flashed him.
Though the backlash wasn't severe, she realized she had gone too far.
In her book Wildflower, Barrymore discusses the Letterman moment and
how she was through with her bad girl years. She wrote:
"I wanted to be a good girl, and I wanted goodness to be the theme of my life and my work."
In 2021, Letterman reunited with Barrymore on her own talk show,
The Drew Barrymore Show, and the two chatted about the late night moment.
Barrymore said that her friend, Dave, could have asked her "what's wrong with you?" but instead:
"You had that smile and you said to everyone, 'this moment is ok.'"
After she left her party life behind, Drew Barrymore had trouble getting roles.
Though she had some small parts in movies such as Everyone Says I Love You and Scream,
Barrymore wasn't exactly where she wanted to be.
In 1997, Barrymore was desperate to have a meeting with Adam Sandler after seeing him on SNL.
Somehow she knew that they would be a perfect onscreen duo — she loved
his goofy style in Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. Sandler finally agreed to a meeting,
but at first glance, it seemed like the pair would never work. Barrymore recalled:
"We looked like the worst blind date you've ever seen.
I showed up with purple hair and a leopard coat and he was in his classic cargo pants."
Despite mismatched attire, the two got along well and Barrymore made it
very clear she wanted to work with him whenever they found the right project.
And Sandler thought Barrymore would be perfect in The Wedding Singer. Critics and audiences fell in
love again with Barrymore's irresistible charm and she was back in the spotlight.
In 2004, the two co-starred in another rom-com, 50 First Dates. And while fans may have thought they
saw sparks flying between the two in real life, Barrymore has clarified that they never dated.
With no shortage of acting credits to her name, Drew Barrymore has shown off her skills behind
the camera, too. In 2009, she made her movie directorial debut with the coming-of-age drama
Whip It. In addition to directing, Barrymore also starred as Smashley Simpson in the film.
Barrymore told Reuters that directing was something she'd always wanted to do, stating:
"It was just a natural progression of taking
everything I learned and putting it into something different."
Barrymore revealed that she's no stranger to seeking advice from other filmmakers, adding:
"I also think at the end of the day, you have to trust your own instincts."
"It's about getting out there, and going and having fun and finding a tribe."
The star added that outside opinions can also help ideas become clearer. For Barrymore,
she wanted to present themes of hope and empowerment and believing you can
create something special with your life. But fighting to keep the movie true to its initial
intentions wasn't easy, according to the star. But Barrymore managed to stick to her vision.
When asked if she saw other directing credits in her future, Barrymore stated:
"I must've been training for this my whole life. I can't imagine it would be just a one off."
Drew Barrymore can't stop and won't stop, in the best possible way. Though she's still acting,
the star is slightly less interested in films, which take her away from home
for long periods of time, now that she has children. She's been branching out,
growing interest in cosmetics after modeling and co-creative directing for CoverGirl.
She's now running Flower Beauty and Flower Eyewear. Barrymore said:
"I'm not good at just showing up to things. I like to be involved in the creative process,
learning how things function."
And the multi-talented entrepreneur dipped her toe into the wine industry,
crafting Barrymore Wines, working with Carmel Road winery to create her signature blend.
But that's still not all! Barrymore is also directing, producing, running her own production
company, Flower Films. Never wanting to sit around and wait for the next role,
Barrymore wanted to create more films for and about women. With her good friend Nancy Juvonen,
she formed Flower Films in 1995, and produced their very first movie in 1999.
They've gone on to produce Never Been Kissed, Charlie's Angels,
and the Jake Gyllenhaal breakout, Donnie Darko.
Now involved in a wide range of film and TV projects, Flower Films is still going strong.
With her career flourishing and businesses taking off, Drew Barrymore thought she finally
found a healthy, steady relationship when she married Will Kopelman in 2012. Barrymore said:
"Will struck a lot of my pragmatic sides. He was someone who was always reachable on the phone,
someone who was a classy human being, someone who
has this incredible blueprint of a family that I don't have."
Barrymore knew they were total opposites, but she wanted it to work out. They divorced after four
years of marriage and Barrymore was devastated. She revealed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show:
"When you get divorced you're like, 'I'm the biggest failure. This is
the biggest failure.' It's so shameful and hard to actually go through that,
even privately. [...] I so wanted to raise kids in this ultra-traditional way and do
everything so the polar opposite of my experience."
Though it might not be the perfect family she always dreamed of,
Barrymore and Kopelman are working well together on co-parenting their two children,
Olive and Frankie. And despite her divorce from Kopelman, Barrymore is the happiest
she's ever been with her kids. Giving birth in 2012 and 2014, she's thrilled to give herself
completely to being a mom and happy she didn't have children when she was younger.
"'Oh what are you gonna tell your daughters?' You're like,
'You're insinuating that I should get in a time machine and erase my life.'"
She told Today:
"They're not gonna have my life, you know. Not going to Studio 54
at 7 years old will probably make them a lot more normal than I was."
During an exclusive interview with People, Drew Barrymore revealed that despite the positives of
her perfect and totally imperfect personal life, she'd still experienced one common
health struggle that can come with childbirth, postpartum depression. According to the star,
despite feeling fine after the birth of her first child, Olive, Barrymore experienced postpartum
depression after her second daughter, Frankie, was born. The Ever After star stated that she
could tell that something was different after Frankie's birth. She told People:
"I was like, 'Oh, whoa, I see what people talk about now. I understand.'"
Barrymore added that the combined pressure of her busy work schedule and her private
life left her feeling stressed and searching for balance. She revealed:
"It was just really challenging and I felt overwhelmed. I made a lot of
decisions and I definitely changed my work life to suit my parenthood."
While the actor stated that her postpartum depression was short-lived, Barrymore said
that the experience positively impacted her and taught her to not let the little things
overwhelm her. She wants to set a positive example for her daughters and show them
that working and having a pleasurable personal life is entirely possible.
Drew Barrymore is still looking to challenge herself despite her many great successes and
her full plate. In 2017, she debuted Santa Clarita Diet, a dark comedy on Netflix. It received good
reviews and it seemed people were excited to watch the gory comedy. Though she produced and starred
in the show, when Barrymore was first approached with the idea for it, she was hesitant. She had
been more focused on her girls and healing from a divorce instead of being in front of a camera.
"I can't feel my heartbeat."
"What?"
"My heart, I can't feel it."
But the amazing script eventually won her over.The female-centered, zombie comedy that crosses all
genres is nothing like her previous work. The show has been a delight for Barrymore to work on and
helped her through the darker moments of divorce. According to The New York Times, Barrymore said:
"It goes to show you: sometimes when you think something is the worst timing and
there's no way you're going to be able to do it, it can become the
thing that ultimately pulls you out of the darkness and brings you into the light."
Santa Clarita Diet was canceled in 2019,
though fans were lucky enough to enjoy three whole seasons of the show.
Drew Barrymore's atypical childhood ultimately led the young actor to
become emancipated from her mother, Jaid Barrymore, when she was just 14 years old.
But Barrymore recently revealed to Howard Stern that she's currently in contact with
her mother again, saying they have a much healthier relationship now.
Despite the struggles with their relationship,
Barrymore told Stern that she now tries to view her mother's choices in an unbiased way.
She stated regarding Jaid's choice to have her placed in a psychiatric ward:
"And I forgive her for making this choice. She probably felt she had nowhere to turn."
The Charlie's Angels star said that looking at her parents' past and her father's absence
played a role in her own decision to reconnect with Jaid. The star also
disclosed that she'd invited Jaid to be a part of her granddaughters' lives. She told Stern:
"She's met my kids. But there's real boundaries and distance and a lot of respect."
In addition to her other ventures in the entertainment industry,
Drew Barrymore also hosts her own series, The Drew Barrymore Show. First premiering in 2020,
Barrymore's talk show consists of the beloved actor chatting with celebrity guests and exploring
human interest pieces, as well as other news and pop culture stories. And the star also
made the series her own by bringing plenty of her signature charm and style. She's even shown
some of the casual wear that she sports when she's headed to the set. Showing off an image
of herself wearing bright tie-dye leggings and a colorful coat on Instagram, the star said:
"Yes, this is how I show up to work."
People recently reported that Barrymore's well-received talk show was renewed for the
2022-2023 season. The president of CBS Media Ventures stated that they could not be happier
to continue their partnership with Barrymore. The Wedding Singer star offered up her statement
regarding the news, saying she was "honored and grateful," before adding that she wants
to continue pushing boundaries and offering her viewers new experiences. She continued:
"Our show wants to be a bright spot not a blind spot and we just want
to make people feel good. And I thank all the people who helped us get here."
In addition to her other roles as a young actor, Drew Barrymore also starred as Charlie McGee in
1984's Firestarter, a horror film adapted from Stephen King's popular novel. And the king of
horror appeared on Barrymore's talk show to discuss the adaptations of some of his famous
books. While reminiscing on stories like Carrie and The Shining, the writer had some pretty strong
feelings about Barrymore's portrayal of the young pyrokinetic in Firestarter. King stated:
"I thought that you were terrific in that part,
that was very, very difficult and you were great. Every time you got ready
to light a fire, your beautiful blonde hair would blow back. It was great."
Barrymore appeared to have fond memories, too, revealing:
"When you're seven and you think you can blow people away with a fireball
it's really empowering."
Barrymore also thanked the iconic author for her experience with him and his family.
"And made important lifelong impressions that I hold so dearly in my heart."
While People stated that Drew Barrymore is a self-admitted "hopeless romantic,"
the star said that there wouldn't be any wedding bells in her future.
Barrymore has previously been married three times, so her choice definitely
has the personal experience to back up her decision. The former child star declared:
"Never. Never, never, never. I will never get married again!"
And according to her, that statement isn't something she says lightly.
But despite her negative experiences, the actor isn't giving up on romance.
The star revealed regarding online dating:
"I've tried it. I went on a couple of dates."
Barrymore disclosed that she'd even been ghosted and told the entertainment source
that one person canceled on her at the last minute. She said:
"I was waiting to go on a date, and at the time we were supposed to meet he just wrote,
'Yeah, I can't.' But I'd rather hang out with my friends."
But Barrymore is open to finding and experiencing love, whether it's tomorrow or ten years away.
The talk show star spoke to CBS about dating and reaffirmed that her feelings on marriage hadn't
changed. After noting that the dating world is seriously different for a single parent,
Barrymore said she wanted to find someone who wasn't looking for a traditional relationship:
"I would maybe live with someone again maybe, but I've had kids, and there's no way."
During a recent episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, Barrymore addressed
the legal battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. While chatting with her guest,
Anthony Anderson, the pair discussed some of the publicly released texts,
mentioning one specific message from Depp, with Barrymore questioning:
"How about the burnt body, and why a Honda Civic?"
The talk show host said that she understood the actors were essentially exposing tons of
information about their personal life to the public. But Barrymore declared
that she didn't understand why they were revealing so much, saying, "This is crazy!"
"It's a seven-layer dip of insanity."
As a result of the interview, many viewers felt that the actor had taken things too far
and had made light of domestic violence allegations. In response to the backlash,
Barrymore issued an apology on Instagram with a video message,
stating that she was sorry if her comments on the trial had seemed insensitive.
"I just want to deeply apologize and appreciate everyone who spoke out."
She added,
"This can be a teachable moment for me and how I move forward and how I conduct myself."
Barrymore also expressed that she hoped to show more consideration moving forward
because she genuinely wants to be her best self.
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