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Drew Barrymore plays me in Riding in Cars with Boys, the movie version of my life that hits theatres October 19. The story is this: I was the quintessential bad girl who got pregnant, married the high-school-dropout father of my child, then kicked him out when he became a junkie. Playing me required someone who understood the wills, willful, prematurely screwed-up person that I was. Casting Drew seemed like a natural. Drew and I met for the first time shortly before shooting began, and we stayed up all night talking about the parallels in our lives. Drew had once been a poster child for drug-induced bad behavior and, subsequently, went into a rehab institution at 14. At 20, I was arrested for possession of marijuana and thrown into jail. Drew was ostracized in Hollywood; I was in my own small town. Yet we'd both triumphed: She became a huge movie star; I wrote a book about my life. In the end, we both came to realise that, in life, gratitude is the best attitude, and joy is what you want to spread around. But with one big difference. Drew figured it out by the time she was 16; I'm 50 and only got it five years ago. Drew had no idea when she campaigned to get the part how similar our stories are, even beyond our rebellious adolescences. There is Drew's mother to consider: Jaid Barrymore and I were both married to drug addicts who flaked out on their families, and as single moms, we both unfairly expected our kids to act more like adults than we did ourselves. To play me, Drew not only had to tap into her own painful childhood, but she also had to delve into her mother's psyche, forcing her to become on-screen the woman she's spent the better half of her adult life trying to avoid. A few months after Riding wrapped, Drew came to visit me at my home in Mexico. I was dying to find out if playing me had healed her rift with her mother. I also hoped she'd reveal whether the role had given her any insight into herself, her new husband [Tom Green], bad girls in general, and the mother she hopes one day to be. LOVE AT LAST How is your relationship with Tom different from your past relationships? DB I was always attracted to bad boys - bad boys who validated the fact that I was a bad girl. It was absolutely not possible for me to be with a good guy. But, inevitably, the bad guy treats you like shit. When you finally get fed up, he promised he'll change, but then it's years later, and your heart is broken, and you didn't really change him at all. How do you think you got into the bad-boy habit? DB When you feel like you father doesn't love you enough, it affects every relationship you have with a man. You're afraid of what he thinks of you, you're afraid of losing him, so you start acting crazy. You cant do anything without him, you're in his face all the time - which makes him claustrophobic, so then he pushes you away. Because you're feeling so rejected, you begin to act like someone you're not just to get his approval. And then, God forbid, if he does approve, it's not even you. So how did you break the cycle? DB We're so afraid to be alone. We wait to do things in life until someone else can do them with us. It used to be that I wouldn't even eat without someone else eating with me. Now I say, Go do it on your own! I got to the point where I liked to be on my own. I'd go to the coffee shop and sit there at the counter by myself, and I'd love it. I began to travel by myself. It was so freeing. Anything I needed to do, Id get up and do. I gained independence. When I met Tom, I had a calmness I'd never been capable of before. I realized I wanted someone I didn't want to change, who also did not want to change me. I wanted someone with whom I could live harmoniously. I wanted to love someone who was fundamentally decent, and that happened when I met Tom. Tom's the first man I've ever truly felt comfortable with. No matter what I'm doing - when I'm eating, when I'm stating my opinions, when I'm working hard, when I'm embarrassing myself by admitting the things I don't like about myself - I know he's not judging me. I used to think the excitement of love was all about the feeling of walking on eggshells, but that's just feeling uncomfortable. With Tom, I don't feel like I'm walking on eggshells, and that's a relief. Was it relief at first sight? DB From the very beginning, I was so attracted to Tom that the image of him made me numb. And I'm more attracted to him now than ever. The more I know him, the nicer he gets, but Tom's also got edge. He's got crazy thoughts running around inside of him, and that's exciting to me. But the way he treats me is always kind and gentle. And what's your sense of how he feels about your relationship? DB Tom is one of the first people to be in my life who believes in a sense of permanence. He's willing to risk acknowledging it, and working for it, and making it happen. I don't know a lot of people like that. Permanence is not something I really believe in, but when I realized he wanted to believe in it with me, I was willing to take that risk. I was scared at first, because I didn't believe him. I thought, he's a liar, like everyone else. My first instinct was to run, and I tried that once, but it didn't work. I can't run away from him. I just think, I belong to this person, and I love that. The most voluble thing I've learned about being in a relationship is that you're not the only one in it. BABY ON BOARD? Now that you're married again, do you think about having kids? DB When I tell people that I want to have children, they say, "Oh, you're so young." I have always thought that age is just a stupid number that doesn't mean anything. Besides, I've never waited for the correct number before I did anything. I may only be 26, but I'm excited to be completely unselfish as a mom. Do you think you and Tom will be good parents to your children? DB I hope so. I would love to raise a wonderful child I'm proud of, who has a good life and is smart and strong and interesting. If Tom and I can remain good to each other, and keep our sense of humor intact, then we can be the best versions of ourselves for each other and for our children. I don't expect it to be easy. Not after playing Bev. But I know now that being a parent will not be about me, it'll be about the child. I remember driving up to my house in the Canyon one night-the one that burned down earlier this year - and I looked through a window in another house and saw a family sitting down to dinner. And I thought, I never once had a family dinner in my whole life. But those people through that window they knew where to gather every night, That's my vision of what a family should be. I mean, I'm sure it's as complicated as any family, but it looked so good to me. And I thought, That's exactly what I'm going to create for my future. I feel like Tom and I have a really good chance of making it, And by making it, I mean... We have a good chance of being those people who I saw through the window, you know? MOTHER...LOST & FOUND Your difficult relationship with your mother, Jaid, is very well documented. You even wrote a book about it a few years ago. But, by all accounts, you were pretty hard to handle, yes? DB People ridiculed my mother for not being able to control me, but I was a belligerent, horrible little nightmare, totally out of control. I had been hanging out with adults, in adult places where alcohol was being served and adult lives were being lived. I was completely aware of the complexities of the world; I wasn't sheltered from anything. And now, here you are, playing this role in Riding, faced with many of the issues your mom had to deal with. What is that like? DB By playing a single mother in the film, I really started to appreciate what a strong person my mother was. She dared to do it, to raise a child without a father. My father wasn't around, and when he was, he was drunk and abusive, breaking things. She protected me from him. But missing parents aren't there to make mistakes, so nothing can harm your idealization of them. You project that they're wonderful. I did that. I thought my dad was so great and wonderful, because he wasn't there for me to see otherwise. And I resented the shit out of my mom, but she stuck it out. She didn't bail on me. She didn't drop me on my head, she fed me, and she made me laugh a lot growing up. For the first time, I was really able to understand how difficult it is to have a child. You have to give up everything, you have to not do whatever it is you want to do. It's easy to say that, but it's not so easy to do. I learned that it's not about you for a long time, and that a lot of parents just can't help making it about themselves, rather than their kid. There's a scene in the movie when my character's water breaks, and it wasn't in the script, but I screamed, "Mom!" from my gut. I was calling out to my real mom, who couldn't hear me. But do you feel she was able to be there when you needed her? DB She was a totally valiant fighter. One time, in school, this bully took a flying leap onto my back and knocked me into the blacktop. My chin came off my face. I went to the emergency room, got a thousand stitches, and my mother brought me back to school with this huge bandage on my face. She found the bully and said, "I will kill you if you lay a hand on my daughter again." What kid doesn't want her parent to say that? And yet, she got to a point at which she felt she couldn't handle you alone. DB She didn't know what to do with me, so she had me locked up in a rehab institution when I was 14. I do not believe you can lock a bird in a cage, it goes against my hippie grain. But being locked up for that year-and-a-half was the best thing that could have happened to me. Being deprived of the simplest things, like sitting under a tree, riding in a car, or taking a walk, was totally humbling. I'd be sardine in a van with a bunch of people going to AA meetings. There was nothing but the "to" and the "from". A green light was beautiful to me. A cloud was gorgeous. A window with no bars on it, a delivery man, a magazine, a furniture store. When I got out, I was 16, and I knew I wanted a different life for myself. But there was my mom, partying, hanging out at clubs, in exactly the same place she'd always been. I wanted to grow beyond that. I had to get free from her. One day, she came to my apartment to give me a TV, and that was it. I never saw her again. I just cut her off. I don't remember if we talked on the phone. I don't remember how we dissipated the relationship; I totally chalked it out of my memory bank. It was too painful, like cutting off my limbs. So you severed all ties? DB By the time I was 20 or 21, I hadn't talked to her in about five years. Then I decided to try to reconnect with her, to give it a chance. But she was posing in Playboy and going out with young musicians, and I thought, Gee, I'm posing in Playboy and going out with young musicians, too. Why are we still living parallel lives? I realized it still could not work between us. Then what happened? DB About five years after that, I was with Tom. I was 25, and I couldn't get into half a conversation about my mother without starting to cry. Here was this woman who gave me my life, and I, her daughter, didn't allow her to speak to me. I started to feel like I was the one being cruel. I was accepting everyone else I met in my life for exactly who they were, without judging them, but I couldn't accept my own mother. When Tom saw how much pain I was in, he said, "You should call her." And you did? DB I had no idea how to find her. I had a feeling she was in New York, so Tom and I started making some calls. It was so embarrassing in front of Tom not to know how to contact her, but he never judged me, he just helped me. Finally, I found her number and called. I was so excited just to hear her voice. We talked on the phone and laughed. I told her I didn't know how ready I was to start a relationship. I wanted to start slowly, just talk now and then. Here's my number, now I have yours. We weren't acting like everything was cool all of a sudden. We were nervous and tentative with each other. Then, she got arrested for posting bills for a concert and carrying a gun. I thought, Oh God, this is exactly why I can't handle this relationship- she's this kid, and here I am, trying to live an adult, respectable life. How did your reconciliation progress from there? DB I called her when I was in New York working on Riding last fall. I told her what the movie was about, that in some ways I felt like I was playing her, and that it was the most important job of my life. A couple of weeks later, Tom and I had dinner with her. She gave me a photo album of us growing up. In it, there was a picture of her in 1978, and I looked at it next to a picture of me as Bev in 1965. We looked like the same person. I realized I'd become my mother. Here I thought I was so different from her, but Tom says I'm more like her when I'm away from her. At dinner, I couldn't believe how youthful she was, what an effervescent lady. But when I'm with her, I'm more like an old, calm, crusty parent who's watching her happy, giggly little kid. It's very strange. So you broke the ice. Did you start to see her more? DB Well, a few weeks after we had dinner, Tom wanted to invite my mother to Christmas at his parents' house in Ottawa. I was scared. I thought, I'm not used to spending time with my mom yet, I could flip out. How did it go? DB She was thrilled. We all flew to Ottawa together in time to make it to the Christmas party his family throws every year. Everyone was there, all of Tom's relatives, his parents' friends and neighbors, plus all of his childhood friends. It was the warmest, most beautiful place. Everyone was so open, it was disarming. On Christmas morning, we all sat around opening presents. It was so incredible. And now? Would you say you and your mom are close? DB There's a scene in the movie where Bev goes to get her ex-husband, Ray, to sign a release form so that she can publish her life story. By publishing this book, Bev was going to make something of her life, which was going to honor her son, Jason, too. When I played that scene, I was thinking, I'm going to honor my mother. I'm going to be her and understand what a little soldier she was. And we all were - Bev and Jason, my mom and me-going to forgive each other for all the mistakes we made. I could say my mom was a stage mother who robbed me of my childhood. I can focus on my mother's selfishness, the abandonment I felt, the way she never thought ahead. But I can look at the glass as being half full, too. My mom was a good, interesting, smart person - a spiritual seeker who enriched me with a love of literature and music. She made me laugh. All of these good things are now a big part of who I am. She fought for me in the business. She gave me every opportunity for a life that I love so much, and I have it, thanks to her.
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Transcribed by Esther of DrewDevotion.
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