Drew Barrymore may talk like an out-there hippie, but when she tells Stephanie Trong about her racy past and why she wishes she'd waited to get married, she's pretty damn sharp.

“'Oh God, they warned me about you—your fucking optimism.'" Drew Barrymore, 32, is sitting in one of the Tudor-style chairs in her Los Angeles office telling me what Hugh Grant, her costar in the romantic comedy Music and Lyrics, jokingly said to her while they were filming a troublesome scene. She laughs at the quote, completely aware that people often perceive her as hippie-dippy with a coat of patchouli dust on top.

But earlier, when Drew first arrived to meet me at her production company, Flower Films — which is shabby-chic and not at all hipster-she seemed far from bohemian. Here's the scene: Drew, dressed in a black vest with a white tee, black pants, black flip-flops and pink sunglasses, rushes in, plops down her heavy-looking totes, hurriedly pours herself a huge glass of iced tea from a container, calls out to a Flower employee to ask if they have any black-and-white film in the office and then finally sits down. A few minutes later, another Floweree comes in and says Drew has to be at so-and-sos in such-and-such minutes. I shouldn't be surprised, considering she's put out movies ranging from the cult darling Donnie Darko to the box-office hit 50 First Dates, but her schedule and motivation completely freak me out.

"I'm such a workaholic and so fucking on fire all the time, it bewilders the shit out of me," Drew says, perhaps noticing that my jaw has dropped, I think a lot of us just take out the trash and are like, "All right, my day was pro-duc-tiiive." Not Drew.

"There are people who have a fabulous metabolism and can eat cheeseburgers all day long and never gain weight," she continues, trying to explain how she's like that with work, in that she can take on more and more without having a stress breakdown. "If you're interested in something, you have to act on it. When you get ideas, don't just let them be fleeting thoughts that flow into the universe, so that later you look back and think, 'God, I wish I had done something about that.' Just go for it and never be afraid."

Drew's childhood story is Hollywood legend—not to mention the subject of her ultra-candid 1991 memoir, Little Girl Lost. Born into a family of renowned actors known for their self-destructive behavior, she was mostly raised by her wild German-born actress mom, Jaid, while her father, John Barrymore Jr., was pretty much like, "Laters." There was E.T., the subsequent fame and partying, rehab stints for cocaine and alcohol at 13 and legal emancipation from Jaid when she was 15.

"I've got one wacky family," she says. "I understood early that we were not going to have stability. You just have to find your own way and not sit in shit and cry about what you think you don't have. Get over it." Even though Drew and her mom talk only "occasionally," she says, "I think my mom is a good person. Maybe we haven't had a traditional relationship, but as I get older, I'm able to enjoy her more, because I'm not looking at her as a mom but more as a friend."

One of Drew's early female role models was actress Sophia Loren. "She was dear friends with my godmother, so I used to spend time in the summer with her two sons at her ranch outside of L.A.—that was from when I was around 8 years old until I was 12," Drew remembers. "My godmother had two sons, too, so I grew up around these rough-and-tumble boys. I think it was vital to my upbringing. I felt much more like a fun tomboy than a girly girl—I didn't collect dolls, I collected Match Box cars."

Sadly, Drew's dad passed away from cancer in 2004. But of course, when I ask Drew about him, her face breaks into a mellow smile. "My dad was a free bird and didn't want to be a dad—he was gone from the start," she says. "Somehow I grasped that as a kid and didn't hate him for it. I still don't." Drew even helped with her dad's medical bills before he passed away.

"I loved the way he was such a lover of things," she says. "I would visit him, and he'd talk about how when he went on his 4 a.m. walk, he could feel the blades of grass under his feet and could tell which ones were broken. When he said that, it brought up an emotion of, I'm just glad there's someone in the world like this—a real free spirit.'" Hmm, it's obvious whom she inherited the rainbow-child gene from.

"Even though he was a hippie, he was a fuckin' rascal," she says with a glint in her eyes, the kind of look that women get when they talk about that ex-boyfriend—-the one who was bad for them in so many ways but who opened up their world by taking them on a motorcycle ride across the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn or something.

"I like that combination," Drew says of her dad's personality, "because I can only take peace and meditation for so long. I want a little bit of mischievousness." Makes sense—remember the 21-year-old who would wear innocent daisies in her hair one day and then flash her boobs to David Letterman on national TV the next?

"I'm thrilled I did that, but no way would I do it now," she says, laughing. "Man, I was such a sexual, free, fucking nudist little bird running around. I love it." Drew has since calmed down, at least when it comes to her exhibitionist side. "I'm still sensual, but I'm much more modest now," she says. "But I think I'll always be a bit of a wood nymph when it comes to sexuality. It's like, 'Fuck it, be free and have the most fun you can.'" Indeed. Her boyfriend for the past five years (though at press time the gossip rags were reporting that their relationship was over), the Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti, told this magazine a year ago that he'd been busted having sex in the bathroom during a performance of the opera La Boheme in New York.

"That was with you, right?" I ask.

"You'll never know," Drew replies, laughing.

In the past, she's had serious relationships with actors Jaime Walters and Luke Wilson, and Hole's Eric Erlandson. She's also been married and divorced twice (from bartender Jeremy Thomas in 1994 and comedian Tom Green in 2001).

I ask about her views on marriage now, and if she'll ever do it again. "If I had known what I know now, I would say to myself, 'Do not get married before you're 30, and be together a minimum of five years first,'" she says. "That's just for me—not my love advice for the world. I feel like I'm the least authoritative person to talk about marriage, because I sorta screwed that whole thing up." Drew laughs. "As they say, I 'screwed the pooch' on marriage. But I never put rules or guidelines on my life. It's certainly not something I desire one bit right now, but I would like to in the future."

Drew says she considers her friends her family. "Beyond any [romantic] relationship I've ever had, my friends are the ones who have been consistent rocks in my life," she says. "They make me feel like everything will be okay."

One of those buds is Cameron Diaz, her costar in the Charlie's Angels films. "Drew's enthusiasm, drive and passion are infectious," Cameron says. In fact, when Drew called Cam (each known as "Poo" to the other) about doing the first Angels movie, Cameron was so excited that she pulled over her car and swapped ideas with Drew until her phone battery died.

"She deals with everything that comes at her with optimism and this deep understanding that she has to make it work for herself," Poo says about why she admires the Poo I'm profiling, "That's a huge inner strength. And she is one of the better advice-givers." I wonder who fulfills which stereotypical role in the friendship, like, "She's the crazy one and I'm the stable one." Cameron clears it up: "We have this dynamic where I'm always telling her, 'Don't do that' or 'Don't do this,'" she says, giggling. "And she's just like, 'I know, believe me, I'll learn my lesson.'"

"Every day, I have daydreams: Today I'm going to move to Hawaii, write a book.' The next day I'm like, 'Fuck Hollywood, I'm going to become a travel writer.' Some days I'm like, 'Man, I'm gonna rent an RV, drive across America, take photos and make a coffee-table book,'" Drew says of her fantasy projects. "As much as I've done, I still feel like there's so much more."

Even Drew's downtime involves some sort of self-betterment. When I ask what she did the night before, she replies, "I stayed home, had a glass of wine, painted. I also sang and played guitar—I can't do either, but it was fun." Whatever, her good friend Sean Tillmann, aka exhibitionist musician Har Mar Superstar, totally outs Drew on the phone later.

"Yeah, Adam [Green, as in the endearing folk musician] bought her a pink kid-sized acoustic Harmony guitar," he tells me. "We've been teaching her how to play 'La Bamba' and 'Heroin' by the Velvet Underground. Seeing her get all geared-up like a total apt student, with her tiny pink guitar, is really cute."

Sean also mentions that he and Drew are known to have impromptu dance parties at her place, usually set to Spank Rocks's "Bump." Sweet.

Back in 2004, Drew directed MTV's voting special Choose or Lose Presents: The Best Place to Start, because she didn't exactly know how the voting process worked. "I wasn't raised in a household that talked about politics," says Drew, who adds that she religiously reads The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune.

You might think you know which party Drew would favor in the voting booth. "I'm a Democrat and a liberal," she says, "but I will vote Republican if I think it's for the better candidate. There are Republicans out there I really respect."

Looking around, I've noticed that most of Drew's employees at Flower are women, including her business partner, Nancy Juvonen. I ask if she thinks men and women are different in leadership roles. "Men and women are extremely different creatures, period. The older I get, the more I giggle about it," Drew says. "But I would like, as an experiment, to let women run things for a while. What could it hurt? Just try it! If it's as bad or worse than it is now, we could go right back to the system we've got."

All this talk about making the world a better place makes me wonder what Drew would teach her kids, if she decides to have them. "I would love for them to become adults who have a positive effect," she says, "whether that's through kindness or if they are scientists or humanitarians or entertainers... if they give something back. The last thing I want is a selfish child."

I ask Drew if she's been able to impart her knowledge to her godchild, Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain, "Courtney and I have not seen each other in awhile, so I haven't had the pleasure of being in Frances' life for a few years," she says. "That's a great loss for me, and I hope to reconnect with her."

Drew continues, "I would definitely like to have a family one day. I don't know when or with who, but I don't picture myself alone and bitter." Drew says she would ask Nancy Juvonen to be the godmother of her child. "She's an unbelievable source of inspiration, strength and stability for me," Drew gushes. "God, I almost started crying just talking about it—I'm either premenstrual or, you know... I do love my friends." Well, it sounds like she's got time to prepare for the big mom-jeans switch anyway. "I wonder how that happens," she says. "When I get old, I am not going to be wearing polyester pants. I'm going to wear old Levi's and Birkenstocks. And hopefully I'll have enough hair to wear braids."

Drew downplays her fashion sense ("I wish I were cool, but I wear Uggs because I'm all about comfort"). However, Dior designer John Galliano, who recently dressed Drew for the Golden Globes, sees her differently. I ask him what makes her fun to work with. "Everything," he says. "Drew is not precious. She is savvy and knows her mind. She mixes her spirit into everything, even the most sophisticated gown. What makes Drew 'Drew' is the way she puts things together—-she'll wear a dress with biker boots. She's the hippie chick, the biker babe, the red-carpet icon.... I just watch and learn!"

There's that hippie thing again. The flower-child image is an easy joke, like that faux Inside the Actor's Studio sketch on SNL a few years ago in which Kate Hudson did an impersonation of Drew, saying everything was "sooo magical." But the label can also be an easy way to write her off—like a guy I know who said, "Drew Barrymore seems like Jane's idea of someone who's really smart, but she's actually not."

Okay, but how is someone lacking smarts commanding multimillion-dollar paychecks, running a successful production company and maintaining a now-golden reputation in an industry not exactly known for nurturing nice girls? And all this after falling into Hollywood's "do not touch with a 10-foot-pole" category in the early '90s. Maybe Drew's positivity—-combined with her relentless motivation—-is a fucking smart way to get the most out of life.