Drew Blyth Barrymore (born February 22, 1975 in Culver City, California) is an American actor, film producer and film director.
Coming from a famous acting family — nay, from acting royalty
, as the granddaughter of John Barrymore and grand-niece of Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore — she started her career as a child actor, with her first major role coming in the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. She is Saturday Night Live's youngest-ever female celebrity host (Barrymore hosted when she was seven years old in 1982, half the age of the show's previous youngest female host, Jodie Foster, who was fourteen when she hosted in 1976), and for a time was the only female member of SNL's "Five Timers Club" (which consists of guest celebrities and musicians who have hosted or performed on the show more than five times) along with Foster and Candice Bergen. They have since been joined by Tina Fey, Scarlett Johansson, and Melissa McCarthy.
After a turbulent preteen and teenage life filled with drug abuse, alcoholism, and worries that Drew may be succumbing to the same problems her actor ancestors had (the "Barrymore curse"), she matured into a fine actress, making mostly cleverly written Romantic Comedies.
In 1995 she formed a production company called Flower Films which produced movies as a vehicle for the actress, such as Never Been Kissed and Charlie's Angels (2000), although her company has also made productions in which she does not appear, like the films Animal (2014) and How To Be Single (2016), and Charlie's Angels (2011) (the TV series revival).
Barrymore is the subject of (and appears in) the 2004 documentary My Date with Drew. From 2012-14 she co-hosted Turner Classic Movies' The Essentials with Robert Osborne. She then starred as Californian realtor turned Zombie Sheila Hammond in the 2017-19 Netflix series Santa Clarita Diet along with Timothy Olyphant. In 2020, she went into the First-Run Syndication Talk Show field with The Drew Barrymore Show.
Partial filmography:
- Altered States (1980)
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
- Firestarter (1984)
- Irreconcilable Differences (1984)
- Cat's Eye (1985)
- Waxwork 2: Lost in Time (1992)
- Poison Ivy (1992)
- Wayne's World 2 (1993)
- Bad Girls (1994)
- Boys on the Side (1995)
- Mad Love (1995)
- Batman Forever (1995)
- Scream (1996)
- The Wedding Singer (1998)
- Ever After (1998)
- Never Been Kissed (1999)
- Olive, the Other Reindeer (1999)
- Titan A.E. (2000)
- Charlie's Angels (2000)
- Donnie Darko (2001)
- Riding in Cars with Boys (2001)
- Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind (2002)
- Duplex (2003)
- 50 First Dates (2004)
- Fever Pitch (2005)
- Curious George (2006)
- Music and Lyrics (2007)
- Beverly Hills Chihuahua (2008)
- He's Just Not That into You (2009)
- Grey Gardens (2009) — Golden Globe winner, "Best Actress in a Mini-Series or TV Movie"
- Whip It (2009)
- Everybody's Fine (2009)
- Going the Distance (2010)
- Big Miracle (2012)
- Blended (2014)
- Never Been Kissed (1999)
- Charlie's Angels (2000)
- Donnie Darko (2001)
- Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)
- Duplex (2003)
- Fever Pitch (2005)
- He's Just Not That into You (2009)
- Whip It (2009) (also director)
Tropes in the acting work of Drew Barrymore:
- Actor-Shared Background: She's a huge fan of The Beach Boys like her character Lucy in 50 First Dates.
- Autobiography: Little Girl Lost (1990). She appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest person to publish one.
- Career Resurrection: She suffered some career setbacks due to drug use in her teens. But after going to rehab several times and getting clean, she starred in a series of Box Office smashes like Scream (1996), Ever After, Never Been Kissed and The Wedding Singer. This erased her Former Child Star persona from public image and she's now a respected adult actress.
- Contractual Purity: Inverted. Due to her drug problems, she already had a reputation as a 'bad girl' and her parts reflected this. After getting cleaned up, she transitioned to more squeaky-clean roles in romantic comedies and the like.
- Dawson Casting: Mostly averted, since she transitioned to age-appropriate roles pretty quickly. Even in Scream she was only a couple of years older than Casey. She did however voice Krusty's very under-10 daughter on an episode of The Simpsons.
- Directed by Cast Member: She both directed and starred in Whip It.
- Doesn't Like Guns: Her discomfort around firearms is why the Angels don't use them in the films.
- Doing It for the Art: Donnie Darko was in financial trouble, so Drew stepped in to add extra funding with her production company and took the small role of Karen Pomeroy because she liked the project.
- Enforced Method Acting: In order to keep her scared and crying during Scream, Wes Craven told her stories about animal cruelty. She is a great animal lover in real life.
- Fake Nationality: In Ever After she plays a French woman called Danielle, with an English accent.
- Gender-Blender Name: Drew is usually a male and short for Andrew.
- Improbable Age: She was just 7 years old when she guest-hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time in November 1982.
- Meta Casting: The film Poison Ivy showed her playing a manipulative Fille Fatale, clearly acknowledging her public persona on the screen.
- Nice Girl: According to most reports from people who met her.
- Nude Nature Dance: She was once quoted as saying, "I'll drive in Ireland and park my car and run out into the field and rip all my clothes off and just run in the wheat fields naked. That's for no one to see. That's to have that freedom of feeling at one with nature. So I am completely unguarded, still."
- Romance on the Set: With Tom Green, with whom she starred in Freddy Got Fingered and Charlie's Angels (2000).
- Shaking Her Hair Loose: At the end of a segment on the February 15, 2023 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show with hairstylist Chris Appleton, Drew begins to take her hair down from its Prim and Proper Bun.
- Speech Impediment: Her lisp is one of her most notable trademarks. Incidentally, Drew's paternal grandmother, Dolores Costello also spoke with a lisp.
- Those Two Actors: She's starred with Adam Sandler in 50 First Dates, The Wedding Singer and Blended.
- Valley Girl: She wrote in her 2015 memoir Wildflower that she talks "like a valley girl" because she lived in Sherman Oaks from the ages of 7 to 14.
- What Could Have Been:
- She was offered the role of Sidney in Scream but took the smaller role of Casey instead. This ended up working in the film's favour; audiences expected a notable name like Drew to survive the opening attack, and were shocked to see her killed off. This helped popularise the Dead Star Walking trope.
- Among the roles she auditioned for as a child actress were Carol Anne in Poltergeist, Danielle in Cape Fear, Veronica in Heathers, Mina in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Kim in Edward Scissorhands and Myra Gale Brown in Great Balls of Fire!. The last four went to Winona Ryder.
- She was the first choice for Nomi Malone in Showgirls but disliked the amount of nudity in the script and turned it down. Coincidentally Elizabeth Berkley, who got the role, was turned down for the role of Gale in Scream because of the backlash from the film.
- She was Tony Scott's first choice for the role of Alabama in True Romance but she was unavailable at the time. Patricia Arquette was later cast instead.
