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In and out of rehab twice before she was a teenager, Drew Barrymore's childhood struggles are well known. Today, she's on the brink of becoming a huge star - even though she didn't land a role in an important sequel.

It's hard to believe, but 16 years have passed since Drew Barrymore first captured movie-goers' hearts as Elliot's kid sister Gertie in E.T. Today looking very much the star, Barrymore, who just turned 23, is currently earning raves as a charming waitress who falls for hapless musician Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer.

Set in 1985 with a jukebox full of hits to prove it (everything from 'Der Kommisar' and '99 Luftballoons' to 'Blue Monday' and 'Love My Way'), the movie might stir up strong feelings of nostalgia for some, but for Barrymore the memories aren't always fond.

"I started acting at 11 months," she recalls of her debut in a Gainsburgers dog food commercial. "By the time I was three, I was a responsible employee putting dinner on the table. I wasn't a kid I was a living, breathing, functioning person in society."

Being the primary breadwinner when most toddlers her age were finding it challenging enough being bread-chewers, was certainly a big help for Barrymore's mom, Ildiko. Her husband, John Barrymore, Jr. (of the famed Barrymore acting lineage), had left while she was pregnant with Drew, whom she ended up raising by herself. Prior to being cast in the legendary Spielberg movie - the director had originally considered her for a role in Poltergeist - Barrymore has appeared in a number of other commercials before making her motion picture debut in 1980's Altered States, playing one of William Hurt's kids.

But it would be the release of E.T. two years later that would have a profound and far-from-positive effect on Barrymore's life.

"All of a sudden it was like this eartquake," she once recalled of her instant fame. "Peole wanted things from me and expected me to be so much older. It was very frightening."

While co-starring in the most successful movie of all time was certainly good for Barrymore's career - subsequent roles quickly followed in big screen adaptions of Stephen King's Firestarter and Cat's Eye as well as Irreconcilable Differences - she was robbed of a normal childhood. The precocious six-year-old had become a tragically young casualty of the 80's Hollywood party circuit. By the tender age of nine, she had become a full-fledged alcoholic, picking up the legacy left by several Barrymore's before her. A year later, she turned to drugs. By the time she was 13, she had already been in and out of rehab twice. Miraculously, she was able to conquer those demons (they were candidly documented in her autobiograohy, Little Girl Lost, penned when she was an older, wiser 14) and emerge as a bright, well-adjusted young woman on the threshhold of a brilliant adult career.

In addition to The Wedding Singer, which Barrymore sums up as "one of the most incredible working experiences I've ever had," she recently finished shooting a non-musical, "historically accurate", version of Cinderella for TV with Anjelica Houston in a remote area of France.

"We were in a town that has not been touched by modernization on any level," Barrymore relates. "There were 60 castles in a ten-mile radius. As a vegetarian, i couldn't get anything but spreads and cheese. It was beautiful but there was nothing, not even telephone wires.

She also just signed a deal to play another classic fictional heroine, specifically a windswept girl from Kansas in Surrender Dorothy, based on, but not a sequel to The Wizard of Oz.

Of course, it's hard to resist speaking to Barrymore without asking her how she feels about not being part of Scream 2, the sequel to the most successful horror movie in the history of the genre. For those who didn't she the original and are planning to, you might want to cover your eyes for the next paragraph.

"I was originally supposed to play the part of Sidney Prescott," confides Barrymore of the role that subsequently went to Neve Campbell. "I ended up choosing the smaller role of Casey Becker just because that was really my favourite part of the movie. I wanted to sort of rip the carpet from under peole, to let them know that if my character could die, then nothing was safe."

So no regrets?

"Sure, I would have loved to be a part of the sequel," she admits. "But then I went and did three other movies instead and I went as a ticket-paying audience member and loved Scream 2."

But while she's been eliminated form the Scream franchise, there's another potential role that Barrymore mioght just be able to, uh, sink her teeth into.

"My maternal grandfather was born in Hungary," she explains. "And many of his relatives were born in Transylvania. My mothre only wears black and I'm positively allergic to garlic. There is a theme and I'm worried. The prospect of me being part vampire seems to be an absolute possibility."

We can see it now. Coming soon to a theatre near you...Drewcula!

Sidney Prescott look out.