It almost feels like Drew Barrymore has lived two lives: the child star who was
born to a long line of fame, hard-partying, and addiction, and the Barrymore of today,
who's done her best to break the cycle her parents struggled to escape.
Here are some of the tragic details about Drew Barrymore.
Barrymore was so young when she started acting that she probably doesn't even remember it.
According to her 2015 memoir, Wildflower,
she was only 11 months old when she first appeared in a commercial, but success wasn't instant. Like
most Hollywood actors who spend years honing their craft before making it, Barrymore didn't
get her big break until about five years later when she was cast in Steven Spielberg's E.T.
At the time, People reported that it was the most popular movie in history,
but Barrymore's involvement only happened because she lied during her audition.
Even at six years old, the star did whatever it took to get the role.
In Wildflower, Barrymore admitted she originally tried out for Poltergeist
and made up stories during her audition to catch the attention of the casting directors.
This included claiming she was a chef and a drummer in a rock band. She wrote,
"They all sat around observing me and asking questions.
I was a dry-witted, lying, thieving six-year-old."
Spielberg didn't end up casting Barrymore in Poltergeist,
but he loved her so much that he gave her the part in E.T.
Barrymore didn't waste any time hitting the Hollywood party scene - alarmingly,
under the guidance of her mother. In her first shocking memoir, 1990's Little Girl Lost,
the actress revealed that she started pouring liquor over her ice cream when she was just seven
years old and got drunk for the first time at Rob Lowe's birthday party when she was only nine.
"I had grown up very fast and it's not very normal to see a 9-year-old at a
big Hollywood party drinking."
According to The Guardian, her mother first took her to Studio 54 that same year,
and the pair often went to clubs throughout Barrymore's childhood. She explained,
"It was like Disneyland for adults, only I got to be a part of it. We went out pretty regularly,
sometimes once a week, other times up to five times. But nothing was ever enough for me."
By the time Barrymore was 11 years old, things escalated. In Wildflower, she revealed that she
got drunk and listened to heavy metal at a hotel room in Munich while filming Babes in Toyland.
When a rock band came through, they proceeded down a path of drunken debauchery by, quote,
"stealing dozens of laundry bags full of clothing," according to Vulture,
and throwing them into the river from the hotel's balconies. Barrymore ended
up feeling horribly guilty about the incident and reined it in for the rest of the shoot.
Barrymore had already been smoking cigarettes for about a year when she first picked up weed at the
age of 10 and a half, according to People. Reports conflict on where the drugs actually came from,
but the main takeaway was that it wasn't enough. She told the publication back in 1989,
"Eventually [pot] got boring, and my addict mind told me, 'Well, if smoking pot is cute,
it'll also be cute to get the heavier stuff like cocaine.' It was gradual.
What I did kept getting worse and worse, and I didn't care what anybody else thought."
At the age of 12, Barrymore was nurturing a cocaine habit. By the time she was 13,
she had undergone drug rehabilitation treatment twice. Today, the actress doesn't touch the stuff.
On Netflix's Norm Macdonald Has a Show, the actress called it
a "nightmare" and claimed nothing would make her have a panic attack like cocaine.
In a 1989 People cover story, things were looking up for Barrymore, who had just left
drug treatment. Unfortunately, the actress had yet to reach rock bottom - but it didn't take long.
By the time her 1990 cover story was published, she'd broken her sobriety,
and tabloids were swirling with rumors that she had attempted to take her own life.
Things started unraveling when Barrymore celebrated six months of sobriety by smoking
a joint with her friend. The night ended in a car accident, where she cracked her head against the
window, but miraculously walked away unscathed. The guilt began to eat away at the actress and
her relationship with her mother deteriorated. She moved out, her depression got worse, and
then her estranged father - who she hadn't seen in eight years - called her begging for money.
Finding out her friends were mad at her was the final straw. She explained,
"I thought, 'My dad hates me, I'm fat, ugly, I've got no money, I'm living on my own,
nobody likes me, I can't stand this.' [...] I grabbed a knife, and I thought,
'Well, what shows the most pain?' So I went in the living room, and I cut."
Drew's incident was widely reported as an attempted suicide,
but she insisted she, quote, "didn't want to die."
Barrymore's mother institutionalized her following the cutting incident. According to E! News,
the then-13-year-old actress spent 18 months in the facility - a long stay that was vastly
needed, however much she would have resisted going if given the chance.
"It was a very severe, lockdown, like no Hollywood rehab 30-day Malibu beachside bulls---."
Barrymore told The Guardian that her mother didn't even tell her she was being committed or
she would have run away. But her mom wasn't wrong - because according to Barrymore,
it was finally the thing that helped her change her life for good. She explained,
"I realized, honestly, yeah, my mom locked me up in an institution. Boo hoo! But 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. I was not a kid in school with normal circumstances.
There was something very abnormal, and I needed some severe shift."
"I swear to god, it's what I needed.
There was no way I was gonna be me without that year and a half."
During her stay, Barrymore formed lifelong bonds. As of 2015,
the actress claimed she's still maintained a friendship with one of the other girls.
By the time she was 14 - with her institution stay behind her - she already felt completely
past her prime and struggled to book new work. In an interview with The Guardian, she revealed it
was so bad that casting directors would laugh at her just for showing up to an audition. She said,
"To have such a big career at such a young age, then nothing for years - people going,
you're an unemployable disaster - that's a tough trip to have by the time you're 14."
Barrymore always had a complicated relationship with her mother. She even admitted in Wildflower
that her mom lost "credibility" as a parent for taking her to Studio 54 instead of school.
"Our lifestyle together was not traditional, putting it mildly."
After her institution stay, the young actress really wanted to change her life,
but that meant she had to change her relationship with her mom. In her words, the pair had, quote,
"driven [their] relationship to the ground," so she filed for emancipation. Barrymore wrote,
"On the day of my hearing, my mother was there in full support of my emancipation,
which would mean me living on my own. I felt so sad,
but too much had happened. The judge walked in and the day went on in a blur."
In her Norm Macdonald Has a Show interview, the actress revealed that becoming an adult
at the age of 14 sort of wiped the slate clean on everything that happened prior. She said,
"I got my s--- over with at, like, 14. Like, midlife crisis, institutionalized,
blacklisted, no family. Got it done. And then got into the cycle of being my own parent."
At the time Wildflower was published, Vulture reported that Barrymore had barely spoken to
her mother since her emancipation, but still financially supported her.
Barrymore is now leagues beyond her wild child image. This wasn't an easy image to shake,
and it took a single, televised moment of clarity to make it happen.
The actress wrote in Wildflower that her 1995 appearance on David Letterman - the
one where she flashed the talk show host - was her turning point. What felt like a,
quote, "fun thing to do for laughs" didn't seem as funny when she watched back the tape. She wrote,
"As I watched myself and my friends laughing from an objective perspective,
I realized right then and there that this was the end of an era for me.
And so I started my journey into no sex scenes in movies,
modesty clauses in my contracts, and a total lack of nudity in any public forum from there on out."
After just six weeks of dating, Barrymore married a British bar owner at 4 a.m. one night while they
were partying. The bartender later told Radar Online that he married the star, quote, "because
she was cute," and Barrymore told the Star that she instantly knew it was a bad idea, saying,
"I realized my mistake on the day I married him."
That marriage lasted a whopping 19 days. Then Barrymore met Tom Green
on the set of 2000's Charlie's Angels - and they tied the knot in July 2001.
Time reports that their short marriage lasted just 163 days.
Still, their relationship was filled with hard times. According to the Los Angeles Times,
a two-story fire ravaged their home, causing about $700,000 of damage. Entertainment Tonight reports
their dog woke them up by banging on their bedroom door, which just may have saved their
lives. According to E! News, they also stuck it out through Green's battle with testicular cancer.
By the end of 2001, the marriage was over,
and they bizarrely split the rights to intellectual property in their divorce.
Barrymore kept 46 titles, and Green walked out with 52 potential film ideas.
Barrymore's adult life has been extraordinarily tame compared to her past. In 2012, the actress
tied the knot with art consultant Will Kopelman, and according to People, she really strived to
raise their children in an "ultra-traditional way" - unlike her own upbringing. Four months
after her wedding, Reuters reported that the actress gave birth to their first daughter,
Olive. Her second baby girl, Frankie, came in 2014 - along with a wave of postpartum depression.
In an interview with People, Barrymore revealed she suffered from postpartum
depression for about six months following Frankie's birth. She said,
"I didn't have postpartum the first time so I didn't understand it because I was like, 'I feel
great.' The second time, I was like, 'Oh, whoa, I see what people talk about now. I understand.'
It's a different type of overwhelming with the second. I really got under the cloud."
Ultimately, Barrymore's depression helped her appreciate the time she
got to spend with her daughters, especially as she went back to work.
"Can you believe I have 2 daughters around your age?... Kinda scary."
Barrymore's marriage to Will Kopelman really seemed like the one that would make it. According
to People, they were married for nearly four years - much longer than any of Barrymore's previous
unions - before separating in 2016. Though the pair had two beautiful children to show for
their relationship, Barrymore couldn't help but feel like, in her words, "the biggest failure."
In an interview with Today, the actress revealed that she sank to a, quote,
"very dark and fearful place" during her divorce.
Santa Clarita Diet was the project that came out of it, but it almost didn't happen. She explained,
"I was not looking for a job. I had actually stopped acting for several years because I
wanted to raise my kids, but then a shift happened in my life and I was separating from their father
and it was just a very difficult time. And then this script came along, and I was like,
'Yeah, I don't think it's a good time.'"
Barrymore took the project anyway, which thankfully ended up pulling her out of that hole.
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.