Drew Barrymore’s romance with co-star Justin Long adds another dimension to her latest romcom. I knew the chemistry would be there, she tells John Hiscock.

The first thing that strikes you about Drew Barrymore is how – there’s no other word for it – normal she now seems, for a woman who inherited both a famous name and a tragic legacy from her legendary acting family. Her scandal-filled childhood was followed by a deeply troubled adolescence that included drug and alcohol addiction, a suicide attempt and several spells in rehab.

But she turned her life around and during the past decade has matured into a multi-talented actress, producer and, more recently, director, who has shaken off the shadow of her family name to establish herself as a major force in her own right in Hollywood.

“Being a Barrymore didn’t help me, other than giving me a great sense of pride and a strange spiritual sense that I felt OK about having the passion to act,” she says. “It made sense because my whole family had done it and it helped rationalise it for me.”

We have met in Beverly Hills to talk about her latest film, Going the Distance, yet another romcom, a genre in which she specialises. But this one is not really for the young girls who have been her faithful core audience: it’s the most raunchy, edgy and daring of the films she has made so far.

She and Justin Long, her real-life on-again, off-again boyfriend, play a couple who meet in New York, enjoy a summer fling, then try to keep the romance burning when she returns home to San Francisco.

“It was so great to be able to talk the way I do in real life with my friends,” she says. “I think a film about real love and life and what we go through in relationships and with our friends would be impossible to do authentically if it didn’t have sex and [bad] language, because it wouldn’t be realistic.”

The Long factor just adds to the realism. They met three years ago when they were both cast in He’s Just Not Into You and dated for a year before splitting up and then reuniting early last year. Neither will say if they are still together.

“I thought it would be a unique experience to go to work with someone I did have a history with and I have had emotional times with and who genuinely makes me laugh and who I’m genuinely attracted to,” she says. “I knew the chemistry between us would be honest, so we would be able to bring a truth to the fact that relationships can be very difficult, and I thought that would be a real benefit.”

She talks confidently, with the air of someone who knows exactly what she wants to say and it is easy to imagine her as both producer and director, taking complete command of a movie set.

Now 35, Drew Barrymore comes from a five-generation strong acting dynasty that included her grandfather, Shakespearean actor John Barrymore, an alcoholic who died at 60 of cirrhosis of the liver; silent film star grandmother Dolores Costello; great-uncle and Oscar winner Lionel Barrymore; and Oscar-winning great-aunt Ethel, who once turned down a marriage proposal from Winston Churchill. Drew’s father, John Barrymore Jr, split from her mother, model Jaid, soon after Drew was born, and died in 2004 after years of homelessness and drug addiction.

She has bizarre memories of him. “I liked when my dad would walk around in bare feet, stoned, and talk about how the blades of grass felt on his feet, and how he could tell which ones were hurting and didn’t want to be stepped on, and I thought, ‘Wow that’s my dad; he’s really trippy and cool,’ ” she recalls. She pauses and then laughs: “Not a very wholesome movie moment, but that’s what my dad was.”

It was her family connections that won Barrymore her first big break when her godfather, Steven Spielberg, cast her as the dimpled, precocious seven-year-old in E.T. But things turned sour when her mother, an inveterate partygoer, began taking her on a round of all-night parties. By the time Drew was 12 she was drinking alcohol and using cocaine; at 13 she was in rehab; and at 15 the little girl who had shown so much promise was working in a Hollywood coffee shop.

There were two more trips to rehab before she moved in with musician David Crosby, himself a survivor of drug and alcohol abuse, and his wife, who helped her straighten her life out. She applied in court to become legally emancipated from her parents.

As she matured, her professional life has soared. She has appeared in some 50 movies and her production company, Flower Films, has produced a dozen, including the two Charlie’s Angels adventures, and a string of successful romcoms. She was executive producer on the cult classic Donnie Darko and recently made her directing debut with the well-received roller-derby movie Whip It!, in which she starred alongside Ellen Page.

“I feel really excited about the last few years of my life,” she says. “I pride myself on them and I didn’t know I had that much discipline. I’ve worked really hard and got to do things I’ve always wanted to do and now I feel things are going really well. I just want to make sure I have a sense of balance between work and life, because work is my life and the lines can get really blurry.”

It is true that her personal life has been complicated. Her two marriages, to Welsh-born bar owner Jeremy Thomas in March 1994 and comedian Tom Green in July 2001, lasted less than six months combined, and her boyfriends have included actors Val Kilmer and Luke Wilson, as well as the Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti.

Looking back on her topsy-turvy past, she is philosophical. “You can’t live your life blaming your failures on your parents and what they did or didn’t do for you,” she says. “You’re dealt the cards that you’re dealt. I realised it was a waste of time to be angry at my parents and feel sorry for myself.

“The low points I had all helped make up my character, so I probably wouldn’t want to do away with them because I like being flawed and I like having them help me grow and change and become better and stronger.”

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Drew talks to NME Movies about Whip it! and how she wants people to interpret the movie.

Drew Barrymore has insisted that her directorial debut Whip It – a coming-of-age comedy-drama about roller derby – is not just for girls. She criticised the studio for marketing it as a “roller derby movie” – the bruising all-female sport – rather than a general comedy-drama for both sexes.

She told the Mirror: “It was upsetting to have a studio put out, ‘It’s a roller derby movie’. I kept encouraging them to market to boys and men, because there was a sports element and when I go to roller derby games there are a lot of males. They love the sexiness, the raunchiness and the fun-ness of these girls beating the crap out of each other.”

The film stars Ellen Page as a frustrated teen who find acceptance playing for her nearby roller derby team.

She added: “I’m a woman so I’m going to make stories about women because I understand them, but I’m also a boy and I can’t stand the term ‘chick flick’. That turns me off. I’m as turned off by that as any guy because I am a ‘dude’.

“I have a very male mentality. The comedy in the film is not little girl comedy. It’s boy comedy, it’s androgynous comedy.”

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Drew Barrymore talked to ContactMusic.com about her worst fashion decision: the green Gucci dress she wore to the 2006 Golden Globes, which made her “boobs look like watermelons.”

She said, “Never wear a high neck dress with a high belt. It makes your tits look like they are at your waist. It was the Golden Globes. I felt so bad. I was like, ‘I’m so sorry, Gucci. I have tarnished your name.”

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Can’t believe I didn’t see this interview until now. Anyways, without further ado – here’s an interview Drew did with Daily Mail in which she talks about her past and how comfortable she is in the present.

Drew Barrymore has been in the public eye for so long now, it seems scarcely possible that she is still only 35. She has such a body of work behind her, it’s a wonder that she looks as fresh-faced as she does. Teetering on five-inch heels, with her blond locks pulled into a loose chignon, she has a childlike quality despite the womanly garb – and it is that beguiling mix that perhaps explains her rare appeal to both men and women.

‘I guess I do have a childlike sense of fun,’ she says, ‘and although I still have my dark days, I’m generally an optimistic person. The way things have gone in my life, sure, I could have been a bitter person. But I just find bitter people really un-fun, you know? And who wants to be that person?’

Not Drew, it seems, who, despite her family’s dysfunction and the drink and drug problems of her youth, is about as fun an individual as one is likely to meet in Hollywood. Since she burst into the public’s consciousness at the age of seven as the adorable Gertie in ET (director Steven Spielberg was her godfather), she has progressed from precocious child star to wild child to award-winning actress and one of Hollywood’s most successful female producers.

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Also, I came across these pictures from the Whip It! press tour from last year which are now available in the gallery. Enjoy! Last but not least, the official UK site for Whip It! has been launched. Go HERE to view it.

IBN reports that Drew will be taking an extended holiday from movies after the release of Going the Distance. Drew has been working non-stop for so long so I can definitely understand her decision.

Actress Drew Barrymore is planning to take a break from movies after working continuously for three years.
In 2009, Barrymore made her directorial debut with 2009′s Whip It. And now the 35-year-old star is preparing for the release of Going the Distance in which she has teamed up with on-off boyfriend Justin Long. She says she will take an extended holiday after the movie is released in August this year, reports dailystar.co.uk.
“My flaw that I’d like to make peace with is to take a vacation. So if I do that this fall, you’ll know that I’ve done something for the first time in three years,” she said.

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Drew talked to Wales Online about her role has director in Whip It!. She also talks about her childhood and how it has helped her becoming a better artist.

ONE glance at Drew Barrymore in her skin-tight leather dress and red satin stilettos makes it hard to imagine her chubby younger years.

Yet, when we meet at the Four Seasons hotel in Hollywood, the 35-year-old readily admits her childhood was tortured: “Oh yeah, school was hell. I was like the fat child who got beat up every day.”

She believes the bullying had its benefits – making her a more interesting person.

“I think some of the most funny and artistic people are the ones who got s*** on at school, had a hard childhood, and have a lot better stories to tell from it,” she says smiling.

“They have a humility, they have an artistry and a humanity, so as much as I feel bad for kids who have to go through a rough childhood, I just believe that if they can turn it around, it’s going to make them the greater people later on. I find a lot of hot people extremely boring – they have not had to work at it.”

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Contact Music have published a great article/interview about Drew and about being a lady boy.

Drew Barrymore often feels like a boy because she’s isn’t very girly and likes sports and ”hot chicks”.

Drew Barrymore feels like a boy.

The actress – who made her directorial debut in the new movie ‘Whip It’, a story about a teenager who is pushed into beauty pageants by her mother before becoming a roller derby player – doesn’t like being girly and often feels quite “androgynous”.

She said: “I’m like a 13 or 14-year-old boy who loves fun music and hot chicks and sport, and I like empowerment and women who are capable and humorous. I think I am extremely androgynous. I love comedy and jokes. I am always the person who is fighting in marketing meetings, ‘Please don’t forget the boys, remember them too.’

“Whenever people get too girly, I am, like, ‘No, no.’ I just appreciate women and whenever I fall in love with their minds and their talents, that is really what gets me hot.”

The 35-year-old star also claims her life is easier now she is older because nothing overwhelms her.

She told The Sunday Times Culture magazine: “I think you start to feel more secure. You feel so overwhelmed in your 20s, and you sit around going, ‘Oh my god!’

“You find yourself talking to friends about work and your life, and you wonder if it is all going to be OK – ‘Is this going to work out, what is going to happen?’ Now, I don’t feel as if I know it’s going to be OK, but I don’t feel it is going to kill me. I’ve got a good perspective on life now. It’s like, ‘We are going to get through this.’”

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