YM - April, 1994

Drew Barrymore has the best bad rep in Hollywood. And if you've seen her in those steamy Guess? ads (who hasn't?) or caught her on the big screen as the scheming Ivy in Poison Ivy, you'll understand why everybody's buzzing about the 19-year-old ex-wild child who's so good at playing bad girls.

These roles may come naturally to Drew because she knows the territory - offscreen, she grew up fast and fell into a self-destructive tailspin of drinking and drugging before she was old enough to get a driver's license. But now that she's grown up, cleaned up her act and got her career back on a warp-speed roll, the true Drew is a homegirl whose idea of a good time is chowing down on macaroni and cheese and hanging out with her friends.

In person, she looks more like an angel than the over-heated guy magnet she plays in front of the cameras. And you won't find the real Drew poured into a pair of spray-paint-tight shorts either. For our interview, she shows up at the plush Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, decked out in a grungy T-shirt, homeboy pants, clunky boots and zero makeup - a far cry from that sexy, trick-riding cowgirl from Colorado that she'll play in this month's movie, Bad Girls. The word is that her role in the high-powered 1890s western is going to send her career into overdrive.

But, for the moment, Drew is content to hang out with a bunch of girlfriends at her Hollywood Hills home. Every Wednesday night for the past two years they've been meeting there to cook dinner, yak nonstop and channel-surf until their favorite TV show - Melrose Place - comes on. "It's my idea of the perfect evening. I'm happiest when I'm with my closest friends," she says as two more buddies arrive at her interview and the conversation turns into a major gabfest. But when I ask why her friends seem to play such an important role in her life, Drew actually gets teary-eyed.

"At the end of the day, my career can go away - and it has gone away before. I really don't have any family, so what I care about most are my friends," says Drew with the wishful smile of someone who's seen it all - and survived a lot.

Most of Drew's rollercoaster life has been spent in the public eye. She made her acting debut in a Gainesburger commercial when she was just 11 months old, and zoomed to stardom at age six in the huge hit movie E.T. A slew of films followed but offscreen her life slid from bad to worse, and every detail of her bad-girl behavior made headlines. Drew started drinking at age 9 and was cruising the clubs by the time she was 13. Now, however, about the only thing that drags her out of the house is work. She's currently shooting Boys On The Side with costar Whoopi Goldberg. And like most actors, Drew learns a lot about herself from the characters she portrays.

To get psyched up for their Bad Girls roles, Drew and costars Andie MacDowell, Mary Stuart Masterson and Madeline Stowe spent three weeks in "cowboy camp," gun-slinging, calf roping and wagon driving so that they could handle their own stunts. they play heroic, gun-toting cowgirls who rely on each other rather than guys to get them out of dangerous situations.Playing a cowgirl made Drew braver offscreen too: "When I was a child I was totally fearless," she says. "But in the last few years I've become Miss Cautious. I wanted that kind of freedom back in my life, and I found it through this character."

She's still hesitant when it comes to guys, though. Since breaking up more than a year ago with fiancé, actor James Walters (who starred in the short-lived TV series The Heights), Drew is seriously single and cynical about love.

drew
confessions

ON DATING: "Dating scares me-it's being with someone you know nothing about, desperately trying to make conversation and feeling totally uncomfortable. I'm not good on dates. I think I've been on maybe one. Anyone I've ever gone out with in the past has always been a person I've hung around with or who I was introduced to through a friend."

ON GETTING THE GUESS? GIRL JOB: "I got an allergic reaction the night before I went in to talk to them, and I swear I must have looked pretty scary, but they still hired me."

ON SEEING HERSELF ON FILM: "I can't bear to watch myself. I'm terrible, totally critical."

ON SAFE SEX: "I think a lot of people skip safe sex n order to have a certain kind of intimacy, but you have to ask yourself, Is it really worth it? I think the imperative thing is to protect yourself, because that's worth it. Everyone I know practices safe sex or is in a monogamous relationship."

"It's not just sex you need protection from," she says. "It's everything else that goes along with a relationship. You can't protect yourself from that. Maybe what I need is an emotional condom."

Having been stung by the press, her life and her relationships with guys, it's no surprise that Drew has turned to her friends for refuge. But she's the first to admit that if she could rewrite her past, she wouldn't change a thing.

"People may see me as a wild child, but everyone goes through a period when they have to let go. I went through mine when I was very young and, unfortunately, in the public eye. But I got it out of the way. For me, life is now all about the passion of what I do. That's who I really am."