Spanish postcard in the Colección 'Estrellas de actualidad' by Cacitel, 1990, no. 94.
Italian postcard by Ediber-Angelus, Milano, Vision no. 4. Photo: C.I.C. - Archivio FilmTV. Drew Barrymore in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982).
German postcard by ZigZag Posters, no. CA. 13. Image: Columbia Pictures. Drew Barrymore in Charlie's Angels (McG, 2000). Caption: Dylan.
Smoking at the age of nine, drinking alcohol at 11 and using marijuana when she was 12
Drew Barrymore was born in 1975 in Culver City, California to actors John Drew Barrymore and Jaid Barrymore. Barrymore comes from a long line of famous actors. Drew is the granddaughter of film stars John Barrymore and Dolores Costello and great-granddaughter of silent film actor Maurice Costello. She is also a great-niece of Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore.
Her career began when she was 11 months old, in a dog food commercial. She appeared in several television movies before making her film debut in Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980). At the age of seven, Barrymore broke through to the general public with her role as Gertie in the Science-Fiction classic E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982). Later that year, Barrymore, still at age seven, became the youngest-ever host of the television show Saturday Night Live.
Next, she appeared in the Stephen King adaptations Firestarter (Mark L. Lester, 1984) and Cat's Eye (Lewis Teague, 1985). Drew had a turbulent adolescence. Barrymore started smoking at the age of nine, drinking alcohol at 11 and using marijuana when she was 12. At 13, she snorted cocaine for the first time. At 15, she wrote an autobiographical book about the period, titled 'Little Girl Lost' (1990). At 15 years old, Drew Barrymore legally emancipated herself from her parents. She had first learned such a thing was possible at age 9 when she starred in the film Irreconcilable Differences (Charles Shyer, 1984) in which her character "divorces" her negligent parents, played by Ryan O'Neal and Shelley Long. Barrymore never finished high school.
A determined Barrymore threw herself into her career during the 1990s. First, she did a succession of 'bad girl' parts in cultish B-pictures like Poison Ivy (Katt Shea, 1992), Guncrazy (Tamra Davis, 1992) and, fittingly, Bad Girls (Jonathan Kaplan, 1994), a Western in which she co-starred with Madeleine Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson and Andie MacDowell.
Then she played well-received turns in notable projects such as Boys on the Side (Herbert Ross, 1995) with Whoopi Goldberg, Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You (1996), and the game-changing Horror hit Scream (Wesley Craven, 1996). An eclectic mix of high-profile and low-key film projects followed including the romantic comedies The Wedding Singer (Frank Coraci, 1998) with Adam Sandler, the Cinderella-like story Ever After (Andy Tennant, 1998) with Anjelica Huston and Never Been Kissed (Raja Gosnell, 1999).
German postcard by ZigZag Posters, no. CA. 10. Image: Columbia Pictures. Drew Barrymore in Charlie's Angels (McG, 2000). Caption: Dylan.
British postcard by London Postcard Company, no. CH 5651 (Series 1 set of 9). Photo: Columbia. Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore in Charlie's Angels (McG, 2000). Caption: Charlie's Angels - Kung Fu.
Italian promotion card by Promocard, no. PC 3786. Image: Columbia Tri Star Films Italia. Drew Barrymore in Charlie's Angels - Full Throttle (McG, 2003). The Italian title is Charlie's Angles - piu' che mai.
Guts, charm, and a black-and-blue sweetness
Drew Barrymore became an action hero in Charlie's Angels (2000) with Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu. Barrymore bought the screen rights to the TV series Charlie's Angels (1976) prior to this film being filmed - a decision that earned her an estimated $40 million for the first film, and a possible $80 million for the sequel.
She followed it with roles in such smaller films as Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001), Riding in Cars with Boys (Penny Marshall, 2001) and the comic thriller Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (George Clooney, 2002). These performances proved to skeptics that Barrymore was not just a formidable leading lady, but a gifted and versatile performer.
Headline parts in 50 First Dates (Peter Segal, 2004) with Adam Sandler, Fever Pitch (Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, 2005), and Music and Lyrics (Marc Lawrence, 2007) opposite Hugh Grant, came next, as did the critically lauded television film Grey Gardens (Michael Sucsy, 2009) with Jessica Lange, for which she earned Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild prizes for her astonishing embodiment of Edith Bouvier Beale.
Barrymore - whose production company, Flower Films, has spawned a string of lucrative features since its birth in the mid-nineties - added yet another string to her bow when she spearheaded the coming-of-age tale Whip It (Drew Barrymore, 2009) starring Elliot Page (as Ellen Page). It was her long-awaited directorial debut about a rebellious teenager who joins a women's roller derby team in Austin. Roger Ebert described the picture as having "guts, charm, and a black-and-blue sweetness". Barrymore had a recurring guest spot as the voice of Jillian on Family Guy (2005-2013). In the cinema she appeared in such films as Going the Distance (Nanette Burstein, 2010), Big Miracle (Ken Kwapis, 2012), Blended (Frank Coraci, 2014) with Adam Sandler, and Miss You Already (Catherine Hardwicke, 2015) with Toni Colette.
She played the principal role of Sheila Hammond, a realtor who becomes a zombie, in the Netflix series Santa Clarita Diet (2017). She also served as executive producer on the series during its acclaimed three-season run. More recently, she acted in The Stand In (Jamie Babbit, 2020) and was compère of The Drew Barrymore Show (2020), a daytime talk show distributed by CBS. She married and divorced three times. Her husbands were barkeeper Jeremy Thomas (1994-1995), actor-producer Tom Green (2001-2002) and art consultant Will Kopelman (2012-2016) with whom she has two children, Olive Kopelman and Frankie Kopelman.
German postcard by ZigZag Posters, no. CA 02. Photo: Columbia. Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore in Charlie's Angels (McG, 2000).
German postcard by ZigZag Posters, no. CA 08. Photo: Columbia. Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore in Charlie's Angels (McG, 2000).
German postcard by ZigZag Posters, no. CA 09. Photo: Columbia. Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore in Charlie's Angels (McG, 2000).
Sources: Nora Sørena Casey (Britannica), Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.
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