﻿From her breakout childhood role as Gertie in ET to Never Been Kissed
and Charlie’s Angels, Drew Barrymore is a Hollywood institution.
But she’s had a long journey to get to this point, and for years,
she was more famous for her behavior off-camera than on.
“Would you like me to do a dance for you?”
After coming from a dynastic Hollywood acting family,
she became a fixture of tabloid conversation about her partying,
public relationships, and struggles with drugs and alcohol.
But Drew managed to come out on the other side – not unscathed –
but stronger from it – to become one of America’s sweethearts.
“This totally goes to show you,
if you keep working your dreams can come true.”
And her recent renaissance is the capstone on a career
that has run through several different celebrity archetypes,
ranging from: child star to sex symbol to scream queen
to wholesome romantic comedy lead,
and finally – to a fixture of daytime television.
Here’s how Drew Barrymore beat the curse of the child star,
and why it’s so satisfying for us to watch her succeed.
“Oh my god thank you!”
Drew Barrymore was practically destined for fame.
She’s a member of the famous Barrymore acting family.
Her great-uncle Lionel Barrymore won an Oscar in 1931,
and is well-known for his role
as the villainous Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life.
“Most people hate me. But I don’t like them either, so that makes it all even.”
Her father, John Drew Barrymore,
was a frequent guest star on popular TV Westerns like Rawhide and Gunsmoke.
So it made all the sense in the world that Drew would star in ET
at the age of seven, and that she would be received with open arms.
The movie marked her arrival on the world stage as a huge star,
before she was out of elementary school.
“I taught him how to talk now. He can talk now.”
As a child star, Barrymore managed to combine a childish innocence
with a surprising level of poise and charm –
qualities that were apparent starting
from her famous childhood appearance on The Tonight Show.
“Well first he interviewed me for Poltergeist
but I didn’t wanna do that movie because it was kinda scary.”
This made Drew Barrymore a household name,
but it also dramatically increased society’s expectations for her.
No one is ever really ready to be globally famous, least of all a child—
and being that famous made it much less likely
that anyone around her would enforce any boundaries.
Drew’s mother frequently took her to infamous party destination Studio 54
and she was allowed to drink in bars at the age of nine.
“A lot of the time I would walk up and they would be like, oh,
it’s little Drew Barrymore. Come right in, good publicity.”
With global success and little to no control
over what she could and couldn’t do,
Drew developed addictions to drugs and alcohol.
By the age of 13, she was in rehab—
a development that sounds too outlandish to be true,
but shows the reality of how punishing the entertainment industry could be
for child stars at the time.
After rehab, she spent a year and a half
involuntarily hospitalized in a mental institution.
“Over that year and a half,
I left there the most humble person you could ever imagine.”
“Right, they saved your life, didn’t they?” “They saved my life.”
Drew also survived a suicide attempt,
and even spent several months living with folk musician David Crosby,
who acted as a sterner, more intense, adult influence.
“This was, you know, school of hard knocks, in the most severe way.”
/it’s what I needed.”
At 14, Barrymore became legally emancipated,
a process she describes as quote “separating” from her parents.
This turbulent start would have no doubt meant the end
of so many other actors’ careers – but, quite miraculously, it wasn’t for Drew.
After the worst of this period had ended,
Barrymore was still a bit of a Hollywood wild child.
She enjoyed being in the spotlight and working in the often-insidious industry
– and her partying and self-destructive exploits
were gleefully consumed by the public.
Her big comeback role in 1992’s Poison Ivy
was a character suspiciously similar to the public perception
of Barrymore herself: a dangerous, manipulative young woman.
“Hello, Mr. Cooper. Care for anything?”
After all, while we love and idolize famous young women,
we also turn on them when they become too adult,
something that’s plagued stars like Britney Spears,
Miley Cyrus, and Lindsay Lohan.
We often demand that these young women become overly sexualized,
then punish them for doing exactly what society expects:
Something that Barrymore learned firsthand in 1995
when she made another infamous appearance on a late-night talk show
dancing for and flashing David Letterman on his birthday.
That same year, she posed nude for Playboy.
And for her 20th birthday, ET director and godfather Steven Spielberg
sent Barrymore a quilt that said “cover up,”
along with a version of her Playboy cover doctored with clothes.
But slowly, over the course of several years,
Barrymore’s onscreen persona changed to become something surprising: wholesome.
Through a series of well-made movie choices by Drew,
she became a go-to actress for romantic comedies –
perfectly striking a balance between approachability and charisma
in movies like The Wedding Singer, Music and Lyrics, and Going the Distance.
“That was the most beautiful song / That song was about you *Drew giggles.”
Even as an action hero in Charlie’s Angels,
she remained endearing, especially when her time spent working on the movie
resulted in her brief marriage to co-star Tom Green.
“I have to go.” “Is it the Chad?” “It might be the Chad.”
Some of these roles even played up the contrast
between Barrymore’s cheery disposition and her earlier filthy public image.
“Not porno tongue. Church tongue.”
But why did she make these choices –
that led to her ultimate success as a rom-com queen?
Partly, it’s because she really believes in the genre.
These movies are also good business,
and Barrymore is nothing if not thoughtful about her work.
Even during her chaotic childhood, she was deliberate about
wanting to forge a more sustainable career for herself—
something she learned from godfather Steven Spielberg.
“If you’d really like to have a long career and you’d like to keep going,
you have to be really careful about your choices
and you have to be thoughtful.”
And at a relatively young age, she picked Hollywood role models
who would serve as a long-term inspiration—
people like her Babes in Toyland co-star Keanu Reeves.
“I would look around and see the behaviors of the people
I wanted to be like one day, and they were always the kind,
gracious, hard-working, lovely examples.”
Drew carefully constructed an impressive filmography for herself –
and these movies made her a safer household name,
setting the stage for the latest, enormously successful
turn in her career: as a beloved daytime talk show host.
The Drew Barrymore Show premiered in September 2020,
at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a Hollywood fixture who’s survived the industry for decades,
she’s now a comforting presence, capable of drawing
on individual relationships with so many of her guests.
As an adult, she’s been able to revisit the childish innocence
of her childhood work on ET, and connect
that earnestness to the way she is today.
“We found you over there, just talking away to ET.
And so we let Steven know, and so Steven, from that time on,
appointed two guys to keep ET alive
so that whenever you came over to talk to him, he could react to you.”
She’s also been able to look back on her past struggles,
and frame them as part of a necessary process of growing up.
In an interview with The Guardian, she says that, quote,
“I don’t think I understood what was good, or pleasurable, or bad.
I was probably chasing joy, but I don’t think it was the real joy.
I was just too young to know.”
In fact, her show is successful in part because of Drew’s tumultuous past.
She’s able to empathize with her guests
(who are often facing similar challenges as young women in Hollywood)
in a sincere way that’s rare on the talk show circuit.
“I want to talk to you, and have you know that
I’ve had the people come and take me away.
I’ve been locked up in solitary confinement.”
Her ability to connect with guests like Paris Hilton, Demi Lovato,
Jeanette McCurdy, Billie Eilish, and Mae Whitman
makes The Drew Barrymore Show genuinely appealing, earnest TV.
This transition to talk show host has coincided
with Drew taking an indefinite hiatus from acting,
choosing instead to focus on the relative consistency of her show.
And Drew Barrymore has never been more popular—
she managed to reach the pinnacle of success and public adoration
by leaving part of the entertainment industry.
Largely, that’s because of her own children.
In the same Guardian interview,
she says that she couldn’t even consider ignoring her children
to focus on her career, in part because of her own childhood.
Quote, “No. I knew I would not repeat the mistakes of my parents.
I knew I would never do that to a kid.
I wouldn’t not be there, or put them in too-adult circumstances…
I would never have had children unless I was incredibly stable,
and willing to put them first.”
In part, this new job – and thus her new social media presence –
has made Drew become excessively memeable.
People love to make light fun of moments
like her bursting into tears during home renovations –
or when she encouraged us all to dance in the rain –
And it’s mostly people laughing with Drew rather than at her—
because they know what she’s been through,
and it’s easy to be inspired by someone enduring all of that
to remain relentlessly positive.
Her joy feels like our joy – and with the deluge of bad news these days,
we’re eager to see unabashed displays of positivity like Drew’s.
Drew Barrymore is a rarity: a troubled child star
who has managed to successfully come out
on the other side as a widely popular figure.
In fact, she’s able to put herself in conversation
with her past—sometimes literally. “Please welcome Drew Barrymore!”
But it’s worth noting the way she’s been able
to have this “career renaissance” —
by doubling down on the traditional values
she was widely perceived to be violating in her younger days,
first as a lead in romantic comedies,
and now as a talk show host and famous mom.
So, the issues that caused Drew’s problems
as a young woman haven’t gone away,
but hopefully she can be a resource for the next girls who face them –
and the evidence thus far points to yes.
In fact, Drew has said she isn’t going to hide any aspects
of her past from her daughters – good, bad, or ugly —
because she wants them to know her as a complete person.
And that’s an example the rest of us can learn from.
So, cheers to the Drew-issance,
may it bring us all closer to healing our own inner child.
“I grew up and got in charge of my own destiny / There’s so much life.”