YO DREW!

Hollywood’s most delightful starlet Drew Barrymore on bunnies, puppies, rehab, rom-coms and Edith Beale.

Photography: Alasdair McLellan
Fashion Editor: Katie Grand

If there is a more perfect setting to happen upon Drew Barrymore than this one, show me it. We are upstate New York in the kind of plush, scrubbed wooden family homestead that gets perfectly reimagined by Bruce Weber after a Ralph Lauren advertising brief. Acres of immaculately manicured lawn and well-snipped topiary shade the outside avenue. It isn’t Drew’s home, but she strikes you as quite the wherever-I-lay-my-hat type. She snoops.

The interview quarter of the day takes place in a collegiate boy’s bedroom. There is the strange intimacy of someone else’s shaving detritus on the sink in the adjacent bathroom and pleasurable mess is all around – a Diplo mix CD, a banjo, every hipster comic book known to man. Graffiti covers each spare patch of wall. Drew spots something from the corner of her eye, the legend ‘Yo! Drew’ written in solid black marker pen on the door wall. She looks a little puzzled. ‘It can’t be, can it? That would be ridiculous.’ This is a 20-year-old kid’s bedroom in the spoilt and mostly pristine upper end of New York suburbia. It so could be. As it happens, the generous donator of his bedroom to Drew Barrymore for the day is called Andrew. He pops in under the ominous guise of looking for a phone charger. ‘Yo, Drew,’ says Drew. His face turns a lovely shade of blushing youthful russet as he bumps knuckles with his generation’s clever fantasy figure sitting on his bed in a cheerleader’s outfit and black lipstick. Truly, you could not invent this scenario. You can practically smell the post-teen spirit.

Entirely unprompted, god decides that the weather should mirror the conversation; bright flashes of pure golden sunshine are dramatically broken by apocalyptic electric storms. And just when you think that the circumstance could not be any more finely tailored to talking with Drew Barrymore, a bunch of white baby bunny rabbits are shipped in for her to cuddle on camera. Drew smiles. Today is a good day. And on a good day, Drew Barrymore is absolutely delicious.

From the outset, she has never really been just an actress. In the days long before reality TV, when The Hills were still the picture frame around Sunset Strip and had nothing to do with Valley Girls trying their hand at work experience with Teen Vogue, Drew Barrymore was our major conduit between Hollywood’s art and its real-life predicament. Both a living gift to The National Enquirer and a fascinating scion of the offspring of Seventies LA excess, she subsequently engineered a life for herself with a cast-iron willpower that defied evolutionary science. Once upon a time, Drew Barrymore embodied a particular aspect of the Eighties: of dissembling families and overwrought addictions, of high ambition and broken dreams, of the very nature of childhood itself spinning 180 degrees on its head (sometimes literally). She was the scrambled emotional Rubik’s cube of the moment, where no line of changeable, interlocking brickwork was ever made up of the same three colours. She was all of our messes.

You cannot help but be astonished by the woman that Drew Barrymore has become from the girl she once was. It is captivating to think that she is still only 33. It feels like she has inhabited popular culture, in one form or another – a Guess Jeans ad here, a romcom there, a Donnie Darko cameo by way of satisfying, momentary distraction – forever. Since re-entering the screen clean in the early Nineties, after a period in and out of rehab, her work rate has been dizzyingly prolific. From Charlie’s Angel to a succession of goofy go-to sweethearts for Hollywood’s favourite romantic male leads, she has averaged at least two movies a year. She produces and will direct soon.

Anyone who knows Drew Barrymore knows two things about her. One is ET, the film that she will be loved for forever. The other is her admission into a rehab a facility aged 13 for addictions that began when she was nine. Her early life is distressingly compelling. The esteemed film critic Roger Ebert said of her, when reviewing her only Golden Globe nominated performance, in 1984’s Irreconcilable Differences, ‘The Drew Barrymore character… doesn’t care about careers, she wants to be given a happy home and her minimum daily requirement of love, and, in a way, the movie is about how Hollywood (and American success in general) tends to cut adults off from the natural functions of parents.’

After devouring Drew’s first and only autobiography for the second time, one that she wrote at 20 and still managed to fill with 303 rocket-fuelled pages, the only surprise is that it has never been optioned as a film itself.

‘No one’s ever tried [to option it], to the best of my knowledge,’ she says. ‘How would I feel if they did? I guess I would have to understand the tone in which they were coming from. The place that it was being drawn from. Just as long as the person playing me didn’t feel entitled. Because I never did.’ We take a break from the interview and Drew walks off to have more photos taken on the lawn with bunny rabbits, deep in thought. When she returns she says she cannot rid herself of the idea of her life as a film script. ‘I was thinking about what would upset me or make me excited about it if someone were to make a movie of my life. What would be interesting about it? I was just thinking – and this is so sad, I can’t believe I’m saying this – I might burst into tears. But I wonder if anyone who made the movie would be as mean to my character as I was to myself? I can’t stop thinking about that. If they really went to that place of how hard I have been on myself. If they did, then I think they would really need to take a long vacation after the film was over.’ She was hard on herself because she had to be. ‘Because I didn’t have any parenting, I had to crash and burn, I had to learn, I had to take care of myself, I had to get things wrong and then punish myself for them afterwards.’

Given that this is the animals issue, it seems only correct to have a jolly conversation with Drew Barrymore about pets. These things tell you more than you might at first imagine.

I have three dogs: Flossie, Templeton and Vivien. Vivien came almost three years after Flossie and Templeton, who are brother and sister. She is the ultimate diplomat. Flossie and Templeton were rescues at six weeks old.

What are the breeds? Lab chow mutts. I don’t know. They’re certainly not pure breed. I love mutts. I like their personalities. Vivien’s an Australian shepherd border collie mutt from the pound. She went right up to Flossie and got on her back in the submissive position and started licking her face. With Templeton she got up and started chewing on his leg and wrestling with him. She understood that Flossie needed to remain the queen and that Templeton would remain the playmate.

If your dogs were famous people, who would they be? Flossie would definitely be like Greta Garbo in Grande Hotel. Or Marlene Dietrich in Sunset Boulevard. She’s really dramatic. She’s like your classic Hollywood drama queen. She’d have the shaved eyebrows with one really prominently pencilled and you’d ask, ‘Are you hungry?’ and she’d say, (sloping LA accent, very Carrie Fisher) ‘Aaaah… I guess.’ Everything with her, even getting her to bed, is like a fucking production. You literally have to coax her. Behind the poised exterior is someone who is just a complete old Twenties drama queen. Templeton is more like a goofy 14-year-old boy who hasn’t really grown into his skin yet.

An adolescent Jim Carrey? He is so a young Jim Carrey. He’s the Eighties comedian and she’s the Twenties movie star.

Who would Vivien be? Let me see. Templeton would be working at the Comedy Store. Not Jim Carey. He’d be a 14-year-old Steve Martin. And Vivien would be…

If she’s diplomatic are we thinking someone political? Definitely.

Kofi Annan? Yes. She’s like Kofi Annan if Kofi Annan decided to retire and work out in a sheep’s meadow. She runs around in a herd. If we go to the dog park she tries to corral the other dogs.

Do you remember your first pet? My first animal was a grey cat that I named Gertie because my godfather Steven Spielberg got her for me and I named her Gertie after my name in ET.

Oh my god. Amazing. I know, right? That was really exciting.

Had you shot ET by then? Yes but I don’t know that it’d come out yet. It was right after we’d filmed it.

Was Gertie like Gertie? Oh no, she didn’t have much personality. I was much more the whip-cracking joker in that film. Gertie wasn’t like that. At all. My next cat was a Calico cat named Pizza. It looked like a combination Pizza. Then I had the most amazing cat named Vinnie. He looked a little like the rabbits here today. He had lime green eyes and a pink nose and he was named after Vincent Van Gogh.

How old were you when you started naming cats after Vincent Van Gogh? Well, yes, it was much later but the thing is I grew up so fast… I probably knew who Vincent Van Gogh was when I was three. I was about 14 when I got Vinnie and I had him for 13 years. Flossie and Templeton are 12 now. They had their 12th birthday in March.

Are they still in fighting form? Templeton’s doing well but Flossie’s hips have been in and out of commission.

Do you take your pets to the vet yourself? I have a great vet that comes to the house. I have one that they go for surgery and X-rays and then I have this cool, mellow guy who comes and does checks and shots and stuff like that. My animals get double treatment.

Is it important to have a good working relationship with your vet? I think so. Yeah. They’re your kids. You have to look after them. But also they have this wonderful woman called Heather for doggy day care every day and she comes and picks them up. They go off and they go to the park every day and they have little friends that they work with. They have a playgroup.

Let’s get metaphorical. Did switching from cats to dogs mirror your transition from girl to woman? Really? I still feel like I’m coming into womanhood now. But I think that was definitely one of the transitions. I got two dogs as part of the transition. It’s so much work. Really. More dog shit than you can ever begin to imagine. I took them with me everywhere. I really wanted to raise them right and for them not to end up like those dogs that other people took care of. I was very hands-on and they went everywhere with me in the car and I’m really proud of the way that they turned out. They’re all mellow, even keel, fun dogs. Thank god I didn’t screw that up.

Would you ever think about getting a more glamorous pet? Perhaps a llama like Michael Jackson? I do like llamas. I think exotic pets should be in their own habitat, though. There is something specific about the domesticated animal. They need you, as independent as they are. Other animals are probably like, ‘Please let me the fuck out. I don’t want to be here for your entertainment.’ Cats and dogs are a good cut-off.

How does it make you feel being in a zoo? I love the beauty and the novelty and the romance of being in a zoo, but I immediately go ‘OK, now lets let all the animals out.’

Do any of them break your heart? Yes. The polar bears in Central Park Zoo are literally like the most badass polar bears I’ve ever seen. They look like they’re going to kick your ass. They’re like the West Side Story of polar bears. I swear they have cigarettes hanging out of their mouths and leather jackets on. They’re dirty and mangy and pissed off. There’s nothing white and groomed about them. If they got out you just know that they’d wreak havoc all over the city. I kind of like them. They’re really not into putting on a show. Like, ‘Fuck you. We’re not going to pretend to like being here for your entertainment.’

You’ve recently voiceovered your second dog on screen in Beverly Hills Chihuahua. What’s the attraction? I like playing dogs. I’m so attuned to them. I like panting and growling and sneering as a dog. For me to go to work and do that every day? That’s fine.

Just over two years ago, Drew Barrymore began quietly questioning the cul-de-sac her career appeared to be heading down. ‘I had started to get into a place that felt familiar and easy. I hated it. I had to get away from it, bumping my head on that familiar log.’ Drew Barrymore had entered romcom stasis. ‘I remember one stewardess on a plane saying, “What do you have coming out?” and I said, “Oh, I’m doing this romantic comedy” and she said, “Another one!” Part of me felt like saying, “Listen, bitch.” But the other part of me felt like, “You know what? You are absolutely fucking right. I need to change. I need to do other things.”’

Barrymore’s work catalogue had become clogged with recognisable, easily readable product. Wishful Thinking, Never Been Kissed and Fever Pitch were likeably fluffy. The Wedding Singer was a cut above and ushered in a full commercial return; cleverly juxtaposing her against the semi-satirical backdrop of an era she had helped define, the Eighties. But by the time you had got to her playing once more against Adam Sandler as an amnesiac in 50 First Dates and then opposite Hugh Grant’s one-note take on Simon Cowell in Music And Lyrics, even the softest of hearts towards Drew’s screen presence began to harden, somewhat. Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, Donnie Darko, the ubiquity of the Charlie’s trilogy (even the mention of the irony of former addict Barrymore being one of Charlie’s Angels had begun to thaw by the end of the sequence) and Riding In Cars With Boys had offered neat distractions, but still the core essence of Drew Barrymore’s box office appeared to be locked into tripping clumsily while making a play for another unattainable guy with a cute quip before lunging swiftly toward the happy ending. Her acting portfolio had become the cinematic equivalent of a particularly sandy beach novel or a Sugababes hit; ace while it lasts, entirely forgettable in the pantheon of meaningful art. There are still stalwarts to this day that will argue that 1992’s Poison Ivy is her best movie. It certainly sits up there.

For better and for worse, there is something about Drew Barrymore’s face that is perfect for the romantic comedy. There is a further level of relief for an audience that has an affectionately close, sisterly relationship with the actress, built stealthily over time, to see her playing the ditz that has no greater life worry than wondering what shoes to wear for her 49th date with Sandler in adult life. It doesn’t take a major leap of biographical faith to work out that this is a cosiness that was absent from her childhood. Amazingly, given her life patterns, Drew Barrymore still looks and can act ten years her junior. ‘Thank you. Oh, good! Well, we’ll see how long that lasts, won’t we?’

All this sweet comedy business that the viewer was privy to on screen was the lighter end of the wedge for Drew Barrymore’s backstage professional crisis. The more artful end of the Hollywood directing network had begun stonewalling Barrymore’s calls. ‘There are films where I felt like I got to scratch a surface,’ she says, namechecking Donnie Darko and Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind. ‘Even Mad Love was quite different and weird. But because those films are small and independent and you’re part of a big puzzle, then it’s usually one splashy sheet of you that ends up everywhere. The smiling, happy-go-lucky girl is the one that people resonate with. So when producers and directors did say, “No, I don’t even want to meet with her”, I kind of understood it.’

The performance that eventually rocked her out of her rom-com gridlock was a fictional remake of the peerless documentary Grey Gardens. Next to Paris Is Burning, Grey Gardens is high fashion’s favourite feature. It is the demented tale of two distant descendents of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, mother and daughter Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter ‘Little’ Edie, who retire in solitude to the Hamptons, to cohabit in an existence of twisted, catatonic and eminently quotable muck until council officials condemn their property and the local community becomes involved in their wilful quest for beautifully squalid isolation. (The Beales’ exceptionally fashion-forward attire has long been an inspirational favourite of Miuccia Prada’s, most visibly and recently referenced in her surprise revival of the turban.)

Barymore fought long and hard for the role of ‘Little’ Edie Beale. Jessica Lang plays her mother in the remake. Though not an ardent fanatic when she first picked it up on DVD in the Nineties after hearing it dropped into conversation in educated fashion circles, Barrymore understood the loyalty of its devotees. ‘It just kills you. Love stories exist between people that aren’t sexual. I loved that about it. It’s an ultimate love story, shutting out the rest of the world and just staying with one person. They’ll bitch about it and complain about it and fight all the time over it but ultimately when it’s quiet they know that they’ve made this choice, consciously. I just fell in love with the script. I went back over it and rewatched the documentary and then it changed for me. Then I became a freaky obsessive. I started reading every piece of literature on Edie. I finally compiled a binder that was a couple hundred pages thick and annotated it and dog-eared it and marked it and highlighted it. I lived her.’

She knew that getting the role was not going to be an easy call. ‘I go to meet a director who I not only know I am not his first choice but I know that I am not even on the list, period. It was very kind of him to take the meeting. It’s a bitch to meet with an actress that you don’t really want to do the part. He did it as a very gracious gesture and then I hope, well, what I’ve come to understand is that with the amount of research and work and passion and care and obsessiveness and eagerness I had to play it, I guess I convinced him. I somehow changed his mind. I called the elephant out of the room. I said, “Look, I’m a 31-year-old girl who probably looks 27 and talks like she’s in The Valley and I’m so anachronistic and probably the last person you want to meet with. I know you think I’m romantic comedy girl and I can’t possibly pull this off, and you now what? You’re probably absolutely right to think those things. But take a chance on me. I will make a commitment to you like I’ve never made in my whole life.” I just felt that someone, some day was going to say yes to giving me a chance because there’s been a lot of filmmakers out there who will not even meet with me because they just don’t think I’m capable of doing it. I understand that. It’s very humbling to hear, “No thank you.”’

When it came to filming, Drew Barrymore researched Edie’s strangely wonderful life down to the last shadow. ‘I felt so connected to this woman. I didn’t speak to a single friend for three months. I didn’t use a cell phone or a computer or read a magazine or watch television or read the news. Nothing. I went into a Buddhist monastery of nothing but Edie Beale. It really screwed my head up so I couldn’t get out of it. I couldn’t shake her. I wanted to honour her story by feeling as trapped and as upset and as distraught as possible. It was not the same for a while afterwards. I was like one of those animals who had been abused and when you raise your hand they jerk.’ This was a crossroads for Drew Barrymore, actress. ‘I didn’t want to fuck up my one opportunity that I was so lucky to get.’

After filming wrapped, she travelled around America with her last boyfriend, the actor Justin Long. They went to Austin and Miami and San Francisco together, before decamping to Richard Branson’s Necker Island. ‘He and I were so normal, which is why I think we got along so well. We looked at the world in the exact same way. If people approached us about what we do then we’d engage and if we wanted to come back to each other we’d gracefully step back and re-ingratiate ourselves.’ She pauses for effect. ‘Usually by making out.’

As it stands at the time of interview, and the time of writing, Grey Gardens still has no commercial release date; there is talk of the TV network HBO optioning it. ‘I’m so sensitive about the whole thing. They’ll put it out when they put it out and I’ll be there where they need me to be.’

I ask her how much the success of the project means to her. ‘I don’t like the word success. I like the word relief.’

Drew Barymore says she is ‘such a Pisces. Overly emotional, highly intuitive.’ She says she is highly skilled at divining other people’s preoccupations. She thinks that this is because at any given moment in any given room there may be a lot of people who want something off her. ‘You can turn that into a gift. You can be part of the conducting of energy.’ I say that ‘the conducting of energy’ is the most LA expression I have ever heard in my entire life. ‘I was thinking of it more like a pretty symphony than Hollywood bullshit but, sure, you can take it either way. You’re part of the playing, you’re part of one of many. Just because people make you the main focal point doesn’t mean that you are the main focal point or that your ego should make you the main focal point.’

Drew Barrymore lost her ego in rehab, aged 13. ‘I think it’s helped to have done this my whole life. I would imagine that for people who this happens to in their twenties and thirties, it must be a total fucking freakout. I don’t know how anyone maintains humility when it happens that way and I highly respect them if they do and I don’t excuse them for too long if they don’t.’

For her next turn, Drew Barrymore will become a director for the Devo-referencing rollerskating drama Whip It!. Rather than daunting her, the project came as no small relief after Grey Gardens. ‘It’s like the exact opposite of Grey Gardens. That one where I’m like, “OK, I can talk about every single element of this project.”’ It will star two of the breakout young female stars of the last couple of years, ‘the beautiful anomaly that is [Juno’s] Ellen Page’ and Ari Graynor, who made her mesmerising, upstaging star turn playing drunk in the brilliant MySpace-generation teen love story Nick And Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Both will do well to listen to Barrymore’s words on and off camera. She is mostly maternal when she talks of them.

Drew Barrymore says that there are three moments in her life when she has got closest to slipping over the edge. ‘When I was 13 and locked in the institution? Not an easy time. When I was 26 and got married and knew that I probably shouldn’t because my gut was saying “don’t do this”. Really not an easy time. And being in Grey Gardens. Cutting off my life, which is ultimately what makes me happiest. Going into a very dark mental space.’

It is a source of some fascination that the first two points on the graph are life fuck-ups and the third may work as personal and professional resuscitation.

‘But the other two were self-imposed, too. Nobody had a gun at my head.’

At 13 years old you don’t need one.

‘OK, you’re right. I didn’t want to be in that institution and I got put in there and it really sucked. Being in Grey Gardens I was in a prison that I felt I couldn’t get out of but it was self-imposed. The other one wasn’t. What’s interesting to me is that the feelings were similar. I was able to go back to that place and channel it. I think Edie felt so imprisoned. It was a very interesting parallel. For some reason at the ages of 13 and 32 I felt like I was in a weird punk rock song called ‘Institutionalised.’ It was literally 20 years between them. Almost to the day. I was like, “What have I done for the last 20 years that I am back in this head space?”’

She chose to be. There are still demons to exorcise in the mostly sunny life of Drew Barrymore, a great place to dip into on a dramatic Connecticut afternoon, with bunnies. Thankfully, she has the professional outlet to rid herself of them now. Or should have.

She says she may marry again – ‘never say never!’ – but likes being single. She’s intensely proud of the five years she spent with The Strokes’ Fabrizio Moretti. ‘I usually get to two or three years and it dips. That was my longest.’

I ask her if there was one thing I could give her right now, what would she most like that thing to be? She is silent, an unusual state of communication for the brilliant Drew Barrymore. I ask if it would be an Oscar.

‘I don’t like to talk about things like that. I think it jinxes it.’ So I push it. Given the choice, would it be an Oscar or a husband for life? Silence again. ‘You cannot say that. You just cannot ask that question.’