RADIANT,
         ROMANTIC,
REBELLIOUS

When two of her Hollywood peers, Christian Slater and Robert Downey Jr flamed out on drugs within weeks of each other, one of their harshest critics was younger and probably wiser than both of them. I mean face it, when you're Drew Barrymore, rehab is just, like, so 12 years ago. "If it had been a woman, she'd have been run out of Hollywood in an instant," said Barrymore, 24, who came clean about her pre-teen binges on pot and cocaine in her autobiography Little Girl Lost. Barrymore, who in her own defence says she never touched heroin like Slater and Downey, claims to have been virtually black listed in Hollywood for years as a result of her drug use.

But what really galls her about the druggie double standard is that she was a child who overcame her addictions, and they are men.  "When I see a kid trying to figure this sh-- out, it saddens me," she told Movieline. "When I see an adult trying to figure this sh-- out, it saddens me even more, because they should know by then."

There is almost no way to write the story of the purse-lipped little girl from E.T. learning the hard truths of life without it being tragic. Somehow, though, Drew Barrymore found a way. Like her hero Madonna and her friend Courtney Love, Barrymore has discovered she can cheat those who would pigeonhole her by recreating herself, rewriting her story every six months or so.

The little girl who was almost too cute for words, became the poster girl for child abuse, Hollywood-style - the moppet-in-attendance at glittery parties, sipping champagne because it looked cute - all under the dubious charge of her mother, artist Jaid Barrymore (her father, actor John Barrymore Jr. abandoned them both in Drew's early life).

A disconcerting introduction to public life, to be sure. But Drew Barrymore cannily fed off it, making her mark as a B-movie vamp, a bad girl in films like Poison Ivy and Guncrazy, quirkily dangerous in the lovers-on-the-road movie Mad Love (to say nothing  of the Amy Fisher TV movie, in which she played the gun-carrying Long Island Lolita herself).

"I wanted to play those characters because they weren't me," she says. "I'm nothing like Lolita or a bad girl or a gun-toting woman. that's why it was so exciting. I got that out of my system without having to do it in real life."

So who is Drew Barrymore? A mess of contradictions, at turns geeky and flirty in public (who can forget her flashing her breasts as a tribute to David Letterman on his show?), a lover of daisies and butterflies, and the tattoos to prove it.

She is known for a mercurial taste in men - with one two-week marriage on her record, and relationships of varying lengths with both of Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti's children, and Eric Erlandson of Courtney Love's band Hole. She's currently having a record-setting two-year love affair with Luke Wilson.  Wilson plays a rogue National Guard in Homefries who is supposed to kill her and falls in love with her instead.

And her career choices, while strange, speak to both her ambition, and her strange internal logic. She turned down the lead role in Scream, for instance, in favor of Girl Number One who is killed in the first 20 minutes. The move cost her money and a role in the sequels, but it allowed her to use her name to promote the movie and kept her free for the breakthrough films The Wedding Singer (Which pushed her salary above the $3 million mark) and Ever After: A Cinderella Story.

Where does Drew Barrymore go from here? You might as well ask a Ouija board. As for where she's been, she says she's totally happy with her progress thus far. "I used to drive down some crazy street in the Valley when I was 12 years old, wondering where I'd be at 23.  This has far exceeded my hopes."

Words - Jim Slotek
COPYRIGHT - Tribute / September 1998
Transcribed by Robert Gale