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THE TRUE DREW |
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Ask Drew Barrymore and she will be the
first to say the past year has been an astonishing one, filled with
major changes and a literal testing by fire. But then, Drew has never
led what most of us would call a normal life. An heir to Hollywood
royalty whose parents (John Barrymore, Jr., the troubled scion of the
legendary Barrymore clan, and Jaid Barrymore) split before she was born,
Drew was a child star at age seven, a nightclub regular at ten and a
drug abuser at 12. She was in rehab for a second time at 14. By 23,
though, she was on her way back - as a producer and an actress in such
hits as Never Been Kissed and Ever After. Today, at 26 and
with more than 30 films in a career that extends from E.T. the
Extra-Terrestrial to Charlie’s Angels, the cherubic blonde
with the tattoos and the tragic past is not only a survivor but a bona
fide star.
"It’s crazy, it’s insane,"
says Drew about her happily hectic life these days - which includes, in
addition to her duties as a producer and an actress, being the newlywed
wife of comedian Tom Green. She is only recently back at work at Flower
Films, her Los Angeles-based production offices, after a month long
honeymoon in Hawaii following the couple’s wedding in July. "We
just got back, and now I’ve got two films coming out and I’m in
rewrites on other stuff," says Drew, who will be seen this fall in Riding
in Cars With Boys, a bittersweet comedy about a teenage single
mother, and Donnie Darko, a coming-of-age drama that is the first film
she’s produced since last summer’s blockbuster hit Charlie’s
Angels. As Drew puts it, "It’s all a bit nutty right now."
Yet even by her own unusually high
standards for weathering life’s highs and lows, Drew experienced a
remarkable series of breakthroughs - professional and personal - during
the past 12 months. As the producer and star (with Cameron Diaz and Lucy
Liu) of Charlie’s Angels, the movie version of the hit ‘70s
TV series that became one of the year’s highest-grossing films, Drew
saw her status rise a box office draw - and even more important, she
gained recognition as a serious producer, a mogul-in-the-making. "I
love being involved in that way," says Drew, who started her film
company seven years ago, taking the unusual step of financing it herself
before landing development deals at 20th Century Fox and currently Sony.
"It can be a lot of pressure, but producing gives you another
[creative] outlet," she says. "I like being in control of my
life, and I really like trying to be a problem solver."
She took control of her personal life as
well. On the set of Charlie’s Angels, she met and started
dating Tom, the wacky star of MTV’s The Tom Green Show. The
lanky comedian is famous for his envelope-pushing pranks, like painting
his parents’ house plaid while they were on vacation.
Almost as soon as Drew and Tom were
engaged, they were faced with life-threatening challenges. Canadian-born
Tom (who also starred in Road Trip and Freddy Got Fingered)
was diagnosed with testicular cancer (it’s now in remission), and a
fire in February destroyed Drew’s Beverly Hills home. "Fire is
such a damaging thing," Drew says quietly.
"In the beginning we tried to pretend
that it was all funny and fun," she adds, referring to the local
news footage that showed the couple’s initially giddy response to the
tragedy. "But everything was gone. It really pulled the rug out
from under us, and we sort of didn’t know where we stood in this
world."
"I used to say when life gives you
hurdles, you just overcome them. But it’s not that simple," she
adds. "Sometimes it creates total havoc, and you start to question
your life. There were things that came our way that made our
relationship not carefree all the time. But the fact we managed to get
through them means we’re strong and gives me encouragement to keep
pressing through."
One of the year’s momentous events was
her reconciliation with her mom, Jaid, after more than a decade of
estrangement. (Her dad, John, who has battled emotional problems and
substance abuse, has maintained a distant relationship with Drew.) Jaid
was a B-movie actress who became Drew’s manager when she rocketed to
fame at age seven in E.T. "I had a very unorthodox
relationship with my mother growing up because we were more like
sisters," Drew explains. She spent most of her childhood on movie
sets or accompanying her mother - who was already less famous than her
chubby-cheeked daughter - to hip Los Angeles nightclubs, where Drew
began leading the kind of fast-lane life that has been compared with
Judy Garland’s.
"I had my first drink at age nine,
began smoking marijuana at ten and at 12 took up cocaine," Drew
wrote in her autobiography, Little Girl Lost (Pocket Books),
after an extended stay at a hospital, where she was treated for
substance-abuse problems at age 14. When she was 15, she legally
emancipated herself from her mother, and the pair began a decade of
estrangement during which Jaid posed nude for Playboy and tried
to auction off Drew’s baby stuff on the Internet. At the time, Drew
says, she was "blacklisted" in Hollywood for living a wild
life, and casting directors would laugh at her when she tried to
audition for serious parts. She called her mother the villain in her
life.
"It was a very tortured relationship
that caused us both a lot of pain, and we needed to work through
that," says Drew, who spoke to her mother for the first time in
years last Mother’s Day. And a few months later, when Drew was
shooting Riding in Cars With Boys, she asked to meet with her
mother.
The irony, Drew says, is that she arrived
at this breakthrough thanks to another mom in her life, Beverly
Donofrio, a former teenage mother and the author of the book Riding
in Cars With Boys (Penguin). The 1990 memoir describes Beverly’s
life as a young single woman in a working-class Connecticut town in the
1960’s, struggling to raise her son, Jason, while coping with a
drug-using ex-husband.
"My mom was a single mother married
to an abusive, alcoholic, drug-abusing husband - very much like Beverly
was," says Drew. She was so struck by the similarities in their
lives - from ostracized teen to acclaimed artist - that she auditioned
for the role against several other actresses, even though stars of her
caliber rarely have to audition.
"Drew was just passionate about
playing Beverly from the get-go," says the film’s producer, James
L. Brooks (who also produced As Good As It Gets). "Even
though Beverly is working class and Drew is a Barrymore, Drew
immediately related to this woman - who was dismissed as a bad girl, who
couldn’t catch a break, but who ultimately didn’t need to because
she just went out and did it herself."
Drew readily agrees. "I did relate to
Bev as a bad girl - to the idea that you can create this darkness in
your life that will overshadow the rest of it, that people won’t
believe in you," she says. "But I also related to her wanting
to have love from her family. And the fact that she got her life back on
track - defied the odds - makes her a hero to me."
"Drew was totally consumed by the
role," says Beverly, who, despite the 24-year difference in their
ages, became close friends with the actress during the movie’s filming
in New York last fall. "Drew really went back to being a miserable
adolescent."
Filming Riding in Cars With Boys -
which is directed by Penny Marshall (A League of Their Own) and
costars James Woods and Lorraine Bracco as Beverly’s conservative
parents, and Steve Zahn as her irresponsible, drug-abusing husband -
brought Drew additional painful insights. "To go back and feel all
that self-hate for making those mistakes, for thinking you are a bad
person, was really intense," Drew explains. And she made another
profound discovery during the months-long shoot: that she was not only
playing a rebellious teen, but a version of her own mother as a young
woman. "I had no idea I would be so overcome with understanding my
own mother when I started this film," she says.
"Drew started to realize exactly what
her mother has gone through trying to raise her," says Beverly,
whose unorthodox child-rearing approach was remarkably similar to
Jaid’s. "I used to read about her taking Drew to bars, and I
thought, ‘How horrible!’ But I was doing exactly the same thing. I
took my kid to bars because I couldn’t afford a baby-sitter, and he
was also my best pal," adds Beverly, who was barely 17 when her son
was born. "I put him in the role of the responsible adult."
Much of that dynamic is played out in the
film. "A lot of times when we were doing a scene, I would identify
with Bev’s son and hate my mother for being this young single woman
who didn’t know how to raise a child and who puts me through
hell," says Drew. Other times, though, she found herself
unexpectedly relating to the frustrated young mother saddled with an
unwanted burden. "It’s probably how my mother felt," she
adds. "That I was this precocious little brat, this terror who was
too old for my age, who thought I knew everything because I was the one
who was working."
While acting in the scene where Beverly
gives birth, Drew decided to finally meet with Jaid. "There’s a
scene where my water breaks, and I yell out ‘Mom,’ and it was sort
of like me calling out to her," Drew says. "It was very
cathartic."
And how was that first meeting after not
seeing each other for more than ten years? "Well, I took my husband
with me at first," says Drew with a laugh. "Eventually we got
to where we could hang out on our own, but there were a lot of real
crazy emotions flying all over the place. The one thing my mom said to
me to break the ice was that we [had] really needed to separate to
become our own people before we could come together again. I respected
that."
Today, both Drew and Beverly have new
perspectives on parenting. "I regret the whole thing," says
Beverly. "I had horrible guilt and so wished I had been capable of
being a loving, self-effacing mother - but how can you be a good mother
when you get pregnant in high school?"
Beverly, 50, now lives in Mexico, where
she is writing a novel. She’s in close contact with her son after a
period of estrangement and is looking forward to becoming a grandmother
one day. "If I had a child today, it would be completely
different," she says.
Meanwhile, Drew and her mother spent last
Christmas together in Canada, along with Tom and his parents, and Jaid
and Beverly both attended Drew’s wedding. Drew’s thoughts about
family, including having her own children one day, are now uppermost in
her mind.
"I used to wonder at Christmastime,
‘Why are there certain kids out on the streets and other kids have a
great Christmas with family and a turkey dinner?’ And I used to feel
so sad and slightly resentful [about my life]," Drew says. "I
really questioned: Did certain people deserve this? Or was it luck? Or
were some people made stronger because they had made it on their
own?"
"You can choose to go through life
victimized and bitter, but that is such a waste," Drew has since
realized. "The best thing you can do is turn your pain into your
strength and try to be a positive force and make the most of this life
you’ve been given. And cherish every day, every breath, and try to
breathe that back into the world, in making a family or being artistic.
Just make the most of your life, because the only person who will stop
you is you."
After all she’s lived through as a
child, how does Drew see herself as a potential mother? "I’ve
always idealized and romanticized having children, and I still do,"
she says. "I don’t know when it will happen, if it’s tomorrow
or five years from now. I just want it to be the right time, and I feel
I’m too selfish now to have children - even though nothing is more
important to me or a greater priority.
"I have found the person I want to
have children with, so that’s great," she adds. And she explains
that she decided to marry - and follow a traditional route -
"because Tom is a very traditional person. It’s always those wild
people who are, but I’m like that too. I admire Beverly’s and my
mom’s lives, but I want to have that strength and independence in a
committed relationship."
Right now, her marriage is her main
concern. "I want our marriage to have some time because this
business can be hard on relationships, whether it’s your different
schedules, or people talking about you, or the fact that as an actor you
play different schedules, or people talking about you, or the fact that
as an actor you play different characters and are not always yourself.
It’s really tough to make it work," Drew explains. "But
it’s not an option to not work."
Having children, she says, "will
happen when it happens. A lot of women in this business talk about
balancing work and children, but I don’t know if you can. And I want
to be a very devoted mother. But I’ve learned about how to be a good
child and parent. I can’t wait to be a mother and figure it all
out."
"And I’m sure," she adds, with
peals of laughter, "I will produce the living hell out of it."
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Transcribed by Esther of DrewDevotion.
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