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"Drew Barrymore and I have met here and there along the way. First in a bar when she was quite young, then at parties and openings as she grew older, and again a few years ago, when she hired me to play a nun in Charlie&amp;amp;#8217;s Angels: Full Throttle, which she produced. She has always struck me as beautiful, excited, fun-loving, grave, willing and positive&amp;amp;#8212;in short, one of the truly unique people I have run across in Hollywood. Unique in the sense that there is something very healthy about this girl/woman who grew up in an environment that, if one had to guess, doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t usually produce the healthiest of people. Raised by a single mother and working in commercials at 11 months, Drew became a star at the age of seven when she played the role of Gertie in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. After that she worked steadily, spending her days on film sets and often her nights in bars and clubs with her mom, Jaid Barrymore. By her early teens, she was in rehab, recovering from cocaine and alcohol abuse. Hardly an auspicious beginning, but wild living has always been a part of the Barrymore family tradition: Her paternal grandfather, the legendary stage and film actor John Barrymore, drank himself to death at the age of 60. Her father, the late John Drew Barrymore, also became an actor, but his drinking and drugging destroyed his career. So Drew truly is a success story, in so many ways. She&amp;amp;#8217;s starred in more than 35 films, including 1999&amp;amp;#8217;s Never Been Kissed, 2000&amp;amp;#8217;s Charlie&amp;amp;#8217;s Angels, 2003&amp;amp;#8217;s Charlie&amp;amp;#8217;s Angels: Full Throttle and the recent Music and Lyrics, all of which were produced by her own successful production company, Flower Films. Next month she stars in Lucky You with Eric Bana. And despite two early divorces, she recently had a long relationship with the Strokes&amp;amp;#8217; drummer, Fabrizio Moretti. (Though their split has been widely reported, Drew did not want to say she and Moretti were done for good.) I say to Drew somewhere in this interview that she and I are alike. I was kidding her, and myself. Yes, we both grew up in fishbowls, had absentee druggie fathers and acted from an early age. But our childhoods are similar only to the extent that they were far from typical. Mine was more stable than Drew&amp;amp;#8217;s and yet I would give anything to be like her: sweet, seemingly untroubled, lovable and adventurous. Perhaps the reason I find Drew to be so different from her contemporaries&amp;amp;#8212;different in the sense that she is so unaffected by her job description&amp;amp;#8212;is because she never became a star. It was never aspired to, so there was no before and after. Celebrity for her is the norm. It&amp;amp;#8217;s not special or glamorous; it&amp;amp;#8217;s the way things are, the way they&amp;amp;#8217;ve always been. CARRIE FISHER: Here we are, together again. DREW BARRYMORE: Yeah, on Carrie&amp;amp;#8217;s comfy, lounge-y couch. CF: That&amp;amp;#8217;s right. We&amp;amp;#8217;ve got the fire going because it&amp;amp;#8217;s freezing outside. DB: And our candle. CF: We&amp;amp;#8217;ve got a very romantic loveship. [Laughs.] DB: Uh-huh. It&amp;amp;#8217;s very cozy. I love this house. CF: So you have been one busy woman: You have two movies out. Let&amp;amp;#8217;s talk about Lucky You, a drama costarring Eric Bana and Robert Duvall. DB: I love Robert Duvall; it&amp;amp;#8217;s so dynamic watching him. And Eric has no Hollywood bullshit about him. But I did the film because I wanted to work with Curtis Hanson [director of L.A. Confidential]. On Halloween last year, he took me to see the 1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie. It starred my grandfather John Barrymore and we both got really emotional. That&amp;amp;#8217;s why I love Curtis&amp;amp;#8212;he&amp;amp;#8217;s a real movie buff, and I feel like he&amp;amp;#8217;s a creative soulmate. CF: You just turned 32&amp;amp;#8212;what have you learned about yourself in the past few years? DB: My twenties were about exploring love and being a wildflower and trying to figure everything out. Now I&amp;amp;#8217;m not comfortable being that happy wildflower anymore, but I still don&amp;amp;#8217;t feel like a woman. I wonder when that moment&amp;amp;#8217;s going to hit. Am I going to be making eggs in my kitchen and all of a sudden it&amp;amp;#8217;s going to dawn on me that I&amp;amp;#8217;m a woman? CF: Well, you&amp;amp;#8217;re more one now than when I saw you before. You seem more settled. DB: I feel it. People who know me are noticing it too, which is excellent, because that makes it even more real for me. CF: You had a pretty wild childhood; as a kid, you did a whole bunch of adult things. Do the photos you shot for this story reflect the childhood you wished you&amp;amp;#8217;d had? DB: It was nice to do such youthful pictures, to go back to such an innocent time for a day&amp;amp;#8212;or a time that was supposed to be innocent. But I wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t want to go back to that age. It&amp;amp;#8217;s been such a struggle to learn all that I have; I wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t want to give any of that knowledge up. That&amp;amp;#8217;s why I&amp;amp;#8217;ve always loved acting; as a kid, I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t necessarily like my real life, so I could escape into these other characters and experience a life completely different from my own. CF: Now, you didn&amp;amp;#8217;t decide to go into show business yourself, did you? DB: Well, I was 11 months old. CF: Oh, you did decide. Sorry. DB: By the time I was three I had done five or 10 commercials and three TV movies. CF: Was it your mom&amp;#x27;s doing? DB: Yes. She wanted to be an actress too. CF: You had a pretty unusual relationship, didn&amp;#x27;t you? DB: We were never mother and daughter&amp;amp;#8212;we were like two friends. She was in her late twenties when she had me and didn&amp;amp;#8217;t have a lot of money. So from a very young age, I was aware that if I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t bring money in, we were going to go broke. By three or four I was thinking, my God, I have to keep working or we&amp;amp;#8217;re not going to be able to pay rent. CF: Did you have friends your own age? DB: No. I hung out with my mother&amp;amp;#8217;s friends from [the L.A. clubs] The Comedy Store and Troubadour, which in the seventies and eighties were really interesting places, full of nightlife and culture and hip people. Then E.T. came out and the whole world opened up to us: My mother took me out to clubs all the time, because it was the perfect way for her to get in. And I loved it: Kids my age were going to school and I was at Studio 54, witnessing the end of the disco era. CF: But some of that contributed to your ending up in rehab at an early age, right? And over the years, you and your mom haven&amp;amp;#8217;t always stayed in touch. So do you speak to her now? DB: Occasionally. It&amp;amp;#8217;s tough, because I love and respect her so much. But we haven&amp;amp;#8217;t been as close as I&amp;amp;#8217;m sure both of us would like to be. We&amp;amp;#8217;re very different people: our mechanics, the way we work, our senses, everything. CF: When did your dad leave? DB: My parents separated before I was born, and I saw my father only rarely. He was absolutely nuts, dangerous and abusive, so the meetings were never pleasant. My feeling was, OK, I&amp;amp;#8217;ve only got one parent, and my mom is a little nutty, so I&amp;amp;#8217;ve got to survive on my own. CF: I rarely saw my father&amp;amp;#8212;maybe once a year&amp;amp;#8212;which, from what I gather, is more than you saw yours. Do you think that affected your ability to trust men? DB: To be honest, I don&amp;amp;#8217;t have data in my brain of how a relationship with a man is supposed to function. For years I&amp;amp;#8217;ve said that when it comes to business, I am a woman, and when it comes to relationships, I am a child. I just haven&amp;amp;#8217;t figured out how to bring the same confidence and conviction I have in the boardroom to my romantic relationships. CF: Are you ever afraid that you might intimidate the man you&amp;#x27;re dating? DB: Yes, in a way. You can&amp;amp;#8217;t treat a romantic relationship the same way you do a business one, by being bossy. It takes tender, compromising, loving tactics. And that&amp;amp;#8217;s such a different approach. CF: Yes, your &amp;amp;#8220;adorable girl&amp;amp;#8221; demeanor belies your type-A business capabilities. In a way, you&amp;amp;#8217;re apologizing for being this incredibly accomplished woman by transforming into a flower child. DB: Yes, an absolute flower-loving&amp;amp;#8230; CF: You seem like someone who would not dominate, yet I know that this is a wolf in very nice designer sheep&amp;amp;#8217;s clothing. So that&amp;amp;#8217;s the big lie in your personal life. DB: You&amp;#x27;ve got my number. CF: Well, because it&amp;amp;#8217;s similar to mine. Except you&amp;amp;#8217;re better at the relationship thing. DB: I don&amp;amp;#8217;t know about that, but I&amp;amp;#8217;m trying. CF: You lasted with Fabrizio for many years. DB: When the going gets tough, I don&amp;amp;#8217;t run. But sometimes you come to a point where there&amp;amp;#8217;s nothing more you can do. You love and respect each other, but it&amp;amp;#8217;s not working. So you amicably decide to part. I don&amp;amp;#8217;t know what the future holds: a lot of people get back together after they break up. We could go our separate ways and work out some of our problems and come back together with a fresh perspective. But first you have to break the patterns you&amp;amp;#8217;re in, that aren&amp;amp;#8217;t letting the relationship function properly. I always leave a relationship with a sense of hope. CF: So you&amp;amp;#8217;re not one of those people who go through a breakup and never speak to the other person again? DB: I think a breakup can be the beginning of a friendship. That&amp;amp;#8217;s not me trying to make everything OK&amp;amp;#8212;it&amp;amp;#8217;s me saying, &amp;amp;#8220;No, we love each other. Let&amp;amp;#8217;s not pretend we don&amp;amp;#8217;t.&amp;amp;#8221; CF: What type of man do you envision yourself with? DB: Someone who is smart, well-read and funny and has enough business sense to know what to do with his dreams. Someone who could lead with me&amp;amp;#8212;not just take care of me, because if you wait around for that type of thing, you might never find it. I want to be with the man who wants to open a movie studio with me and make films for new, fresh filmmakers who aren&amp;amp;#8217;t getting a chance somewhere else. I haven&amp;amp;#8217;t yet had that type of partnership in a romantic relationship. CF: How do you share your life with someone and not have him end up being Mr. Drew Barrymore? DB: I wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t want the guy who liked being Mr. Drew Barrymore! CF: Maybe you&amp;amp;#8217;ve got to go to Europe to find someone. DB: Or find someone who&amp;amp;#8217;s confident enough&amp;amp;#8212;or old enough&amp;amp;#8212;to handle it. I&amp;amp;#8217;ve never dated anybody older, actually. There are so many things I&amp;amp;#8217;m curious about, and I&amp;amp;#8217;d love to be able to say, &amp;amp;#8220;Teach me.&amp;amp;#8221; I want to learn from the people around me. For instance, you do the thing I would love to do the most, which is writing. CF: We&amp;amp;#8217;ve had this conversation before&amp;amp;#8212;I think you could write something very funny about your childhood. DB: Oh, God, I would love to. I&amp;amp;#8217;ve been producing for 13 years. I&amp;amp;#8217;ve made a string of joyful movies with positive messages about comedy, love and romance. Now I&amp;amp;#8217;m ready for the next stage of my life. I love writing, directing and photography; if I could figure out a way to put the three things together, that&amp;amp;#8217;s what I would love to do. CF: You need to be moved three inches to a slant where your childhood is funny. I always say, if my life weren&amp;amp;#8217;t funny, it would just be true&amp;amp;#8212;and that&amp;amp;#8217;s unacceptable. [Laughs.] So as you get older, do you fantasize about having children? DB: I always thought I desperately wanted a husband and a big family, because I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t have it growing up. But now that I&amp;amp;#8217;m 32 and in a prime position to welcome that into my life, it&amp;amp;#8217;s not what I want. Eventually I would love to be the Griswolds, and go to amusement parks and drive a wood-paneled station wagon and eat dinner at the kitchen table. But right now, I have this big family made up of my friends. My house is always full of people! CF: OK, should we wrap it up so we can plan that party we&amp;amp;#8217;ve always talked about throwing together? DB: [Laughs.] Sure. This was not only my funnest interview in so long, but it was like therapy! You totally called me out on things. CF: Well, in some ways, you remind me of myself. DB: I love that we&amp;#x27;re alike."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2007/03/drew-barrymore>