Drew Barrymore: ‘My whole plan was shot to s**t’
“MY WHOLE plan was shot to s**t,” Drew Barrymore openly tells news.com.au after her well-publicised divorce. But there’s one question she can’t answer.
Hook Ups & Break Ups
Don't miss out on the headlines from Hook Ups & Break Ups. Followed categories will be added to My News.
TWELVE months ago Drew Barrymore was the wife of art consultant Will Kopelman, with whom she was raising their two daughters, Olive, 4, and Frankie, 2.
With no intention of returning to her acting career, she was enjoying life as a stay-at-home mum. Now, life couldn’t be more different.
“My whole plan was shot to s**t,” she tells news.com.au. “It’s been a really hard time. But I’m not a depressive person. I never have been.”
Barrymore, who turns 42 next week, is in New York City to promote her gruesome Netflix series Santa Clarita Diet. It seems the show couldn’t have come at a better time in her life.
“They offered me this role and at the time I made no secret about it, I was definitely getting a divorce. It was just a really hard time for me and I didn’t want to work. I was internally saying, ‘F**k,’ when I read the script. I thought it was bad timing. But I loved it.”
She saw in the role of Sheila some parallels to her own life. “She is on an exploration, an awakening.”
Understandably, having gone through such a tumultuous time, Barrymore’s emotions are close to the surface. When asked what she’s discovered about herself in the past year, a period fraught with stress and sadness, she laughs, at first. “That question makes me feel vulnerable.” She pauses.
“Oh, s**t. I don’t know. A lot.” Turning to look out the window at the snow-covered street, her eyes fill with tears. “Those New York winters, they can really get to you, can’t they?” she jokes, attempting to cover her feelings.
A celebrity since she started acting in movies as a child, with her breakthrough role in E.T., Barrymore has lived her whole life in the public eye. Her rather unusual childhood became tabloid fodder early on.
She started drinking at age nine, was often photographed in nightclubs with her mother by the age of 10 (she jokes, “Hey, I got to go to Studio 54. Who wouldn’t want to go there, right?”), and went to rehab at age 12 for alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine addiction. Although it was not to be her last trip to rehab, she famously turned her life around and is often cited as a role model for other child actors.
“My life has been an open book. I fell down sometimes here and there, like everybody, but not everybody’s life is an open book. I’ve had moments when I wanted things to be private and I didn’t have the luxury of it, but fine, whatever, who gives a s**t? Every job has its karma and that’s part of this job. I love this job, so I’ll take it,” she tells news.com.au.
“It’s important to be honest, to be yourself.”
How does Barrymore handle stress these days?
“Well, I don’t like chocolate. I go straight for the carbs. Pasta especially. I heal through food,” she says.
But sitting here today, she certainly doesn’t have the appearance of someone who eats pasta regularly. “Well, I lost weight for the show,” she acknowledges. “By the time I finished filming the season I was healthier, happier, and 20 pounds lighter. I had shed a skin.”
Santa Clarita Diet has garnered mixed reviews, in part due to the graphic nature of some of the scenes. As Sheila, a cannibal with some digestion issues, we see her consume body parts (not all of which remain in her stomach).
“Almost none of it is CGI. It’s all there other than the actual moment of vomiting out of the mouth,” she laughs. “There was a little help there but the limbs and everything look real. “Looking authentic is a good thing, I think. It’s not comedy yuck where things look a little fake. It looks like human stuff.”
Clearly, Barrymore isn’t queasy and in this role takes projectile vomiting to Olympian levels. “When we shot the scene with the all the vomit in the bathroom, I kept saying, ‘More vomit! More vomit!’ It was a two-day process.”
As a producer, Barrymore has always been supportive of female-driven movies (including two of the three Charlie’s Angels films, and He’s Just Not That Into You), and she directed Ellen Page in Whip It, in 2009.
Unsurprisingly, she was thrilled when her four-year-old daughter, Olive, joined the women’s march in New York City. “Her dad brought her,” she smiles proudly. “The fact that I had a daughter that got to be in that march was so amazing. I was in Berlin when it was happening and I couldn’t go, but I was just so there in spirit and I was watching my daughter walk in it. I was watching CNN all night and on every feed,” she says.
“She was so proud to be in that march. It really meant a lot to her.”
Motherhood is evidently a role Barrymore was born to play. “Since becoming a mum, I’m more patient, which is very important. My kids make me be my best,” she smiles. “They never bring out the worst in me, but of course, you’re only human.”
In a philosophical mood, she adds, “I don’t know the meaning of life yet but I definitely know the meaning of my life, and I’m in awe every day that, at age 37 and 39, I met these two people who, for as long as I will be on this planet, will be my first thoughts and feelings in everything I do.”
Originally published as Drew Barrymore: ‘My whole plan was shot to s**t’
Georgia’s tears in first post-split interview
The former Bachelorette opened up for the first time about her split from husband Lee Elliott in an emotional podcast interview.
Sydney Sweeney seen with newly-single star
The actress has been seen sharing an intimate moment with another newly-single star, who recently welcomed a baby with his famous ex.