Drama is a tradition in the Barrymore family. Her great-great-grandmother was Louisa Lane, a pre-Civil War stage actress and owner of Philadelphia's prestigious Arch Street Theatre, who starred with John Wilkes Booth in a staging of Macbeth, his last role before killing Abraham Lincoln. Louisa Lane married actor John Drew, and their son John Drew Jr was a Broadway star from the 1880s to the 1920s. Their daughter, actress Georgiana Drew, married actor Maurice Barrymore, spawning three offspring familiar to anyone who watches old movies, Ethel, John, and Lionel Barrymore. John Barrymore married four times and died of alcoholism. His son, actor John Drew Barrymore, amidst his own four marriages and heavy drinking, fathered Drew Barrymore but left the home before she was born, and was never a part of her life.
At 15, Drew Barrymore went to court, argued that her mother was a bad influence, and won her emancipation as an adult. Freed from her mother's guardianship, Barrymore started her comeback with several Lolita-roles in the early 1990s, including Guncrazy with Joe Dallesandro and Poison Ivy with Sara Gilbert. At 17 she played an aspiring actress in a prime time soap opera, 2000 Malibu Road, with Lisa Hartman as her ex-hooker landlady. At 18 she starred in a delightfully lurid TV telling of the The Amy Fisher Story. In the mid-1990s she had a small, almost superfluous role in Batman Forever with Val Kilmer, and appeared in Woody Allen's musical Everyone Says I Love You (but had her singing dubbed by someone who could carry a tune). She posed for Playboy and famously flashed David Letterman for his birthday in 1995. She was the first victim in Scream with Neve Campbell, she was at her cutest opposite Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer, and she showed dramatic abilities in the weirdly profound Donnie Darko with Jake Gyllenhaal and the profoundly weird Confessions of a Dangerous Mind with George Clooney.
Now a major star, she has produced several of her biggest hits, including the unlikely charmer Ever After with Barrymore as Cinderella to Dougray Scott's Prince Charming, Never Been Kissed with David Arquette, Charlie's Angels with Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu, and Fever Pitch with Jimmy Fallon. She produced and voiced the animated Olive the Other Reindeer Christmas special.
In 1994 she married bartender Jeremy Thomas in his Los Angeles tavern, where the ceremony was performed by a clairvoyant they reached by dialing a psychic hot line. Their marriage lasted barely a month. She was later married briefly to comic-irritant Tom Green, after her Beverly Hills mansion burned to the ground in 2001. She was the focus of the charming stalker documentary My Date with Drew, in which a lifetime fan went to frightening lengths to briefly gain Ms Barrymore's attention. She is the godmother of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.
Her half-brother, John Blyth Barrymore, was an actor whose career peaked with a recurring role as Caine's nephew on the original Kung Fu with David Carradine. Her aunt, Diana Barrymore, was a successful film and stage actress in the 1940s who was -- like Drew -- abandoned by her father and neglected by her mother. She killed herself in 1960, and her story was told in the film Too Much, Too Soon starring Errol Flynn as John Barrymore and Dorothy Malone as Diana Barrymore.
[1] Interview, New Woman magazine, July 2003: "Do I like women sexually? Yeah, I do. Totally. I have always considered myself bisexual. I love a woman's body. I think a woman and a woman together are beautiful, just as a man and a woman together are beautiful. Being with a woman is like exploring your own body, but through someone else. When I was younger I used to go with lots of women. Totally -- I love it."
Father: John Drew Barrymore (actor, b. 4-Jun-1932, d. 29-Nov-2004)
Mother: Ildiko Jaid Mako Barrymore (actress, "Jaid Barrymore", b. 8-May-1946)
Brother: John Blyth Barrymore (actor, half-brother, b. 15-May-1954)
Sister: Blyth Dolores Barrymore (half-sister, b. 28-Oct-1960)
Sister: Jessica Barrymore (half-sister)
Boyfriend: Corey Feldman (actor, b. 16-Jul-1971, dated 1989-90)
Boyfriend: Phedon Papamichael (cinematographer, b. 1962, dated 1991-92)
Boyfriend: Jamie Walters (actor/singer, b. 13-Jun-1969, dated and briefly engaged 1992-93)
Husband: Jeremy Thomas (bartender, m. 20-Mar-1994, div. 28-Apr-1994)
Boyfriend: Eric Erlandson (Hole, b. 9-Jan-1963, dated c. 1995)
Boyfriend: Luke Wilson (actor, b. 21-Sep-1971, dated 1996-99)
Husband: Tom Green (comic/irritant, b. 30-Jul-1971, m. 7-Jul-2001, sep. Dec-2001, div. 15-Oct-2002)
Boyfriend: Brandon Davis (model, millionaire heir, dated 2002)
Boyfriend: Joel Shearer (guitarist/singer for Alanis Morissette, dated 2002)
Boyfriend: Alec Piro (drummer for Deadsy, "Alec Pure", b. 1976, dated 2002-03)
Boyfriend: Fabrizio Moretti (drummer for The Strokes, b. 02-Jun-1980, dated 2003-07)
Boyfriend: Johnny Borrell (singer, dated 2007)
Boyfriend: Zach Braff (actor, dated 2007)
Boyfriend: Justin Long (actor, dated 2007-08)
Boyfriend: Will Kopelman (b. circa 1978, together since 2010, fiancé 2012)
High School: (drop-out)
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Endorsement of Baskin-Robbins South Korea (2005)
Golden Globe 2010, Best Actress for Grey Gardens
Hollywood Walk of Fame 6925 Hollywood Blvd. (3-Feb-2004)
Posed Naked for Playboy 1995
unknown detox facility three months, Jul-1989
ASAP Family Treatment Center 1988
Animal Bite dog, during commercial audition (age 11)
Emancipated Minor 1990
Suicide Attempt
Breast Reduction Surgery 1994
Tonsillectomy (1996)
Hungarian Ancestry
Risk Factors: Alcoholism, Depression, Cocaine, Vegetarian, Former Smoker, Marijuana, Insomnia, Yoga, Aviophobia
FILMOGRAPHY AS DIRECTOR
Whip It (13-Sep-2009)
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Big Miracle (2-Feb-2012)
Going the Distance (27-Aug-2010) · Erin
Everybody's Fine (3-Nov-2009)
Whip It (13-Sep-2009) · Smashley Simpson
Grey Gardens (18-Apr-2009) · Little Edie
He's Just Not That Into You (5-Feb-2009)
Beverly Hills Chihuahua (25-Sep-2008) [VOICE]
Lucky You (1-May-2007)
Music and Lyrics (9-Feb-2007)
Curious George (10-Feb-2006) [VOICE]
Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story (23-Jul-2005) · Herself [VOICE]
Fever Pitch (8-Apr-2005)
My Date with Drew (3-Apr-2004) · Herself
50 First Dates (13-Feb-2004)
Duplex (26-Sep-2003)
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (18-Jun-2003) · Dylan
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (31-Dec-2002)
Riding in Cars with Boys (19-Oct-2001) · Beverly Donofrio
Freddy Got Fingered (18-Apr-2001)
Donnie Darko (19-Jan-2001)
Charlie's Angels (22-Oct-2000) · Dylan
Titan A.E. (13-Jun-2000) [VOICE]
Skipped Parts (6-Jun-2000) · Fantasy Girl
Olive, the Other Reindeer (17-Dec-1999) [VOICE]
Never Been Kissed (9-Apr-1999)
Home Fries (16-Sep-1998) · Sally
Ever After (29-Jul-1998) · Danielle
The Wedding Singer (13-Feb-1998)
Best Men (17-Oct-1997) · Hope
Wishful Thinking (1997) · Lena
Scream (20-Dec-1996) · Casey
Everyone Says I Love You (6-Dec-1996)
Batman Forever (16-Jun-1995) · Sugar
Mad Love (26-May-1995)
Boys on the Side (3-Feb-1995) · Holly
Bad Girls (22-Apr-1994) · Lilly Laronette
Inside the Goldmine (1994)
Wayne's World 2 (10-Dec-1993) · Bjergen Kjergen
Doppelganger (26-May-1993)
No Place to Hide (16-Apr-1993)
The Amy Fisher Story (3-Jan-1993)
Guncrazy (11-Sep-1992)
Sketch Artist (27-Jun-1992)
Waxwork II: Lost in Time (16-Jun-1992)
Poison Ivy (8-May-1992) · Ivy
Motorama (10-Sep-1991)
Far from Home (30-Jun-1989)
See You in the Morning (14-Apr-1989)
15 and Getting Straight (1989)
A Conspiracy of Love (18-Oct-1987)
Babes in Toyland (19-Dec-1986) · Lisa Piper
The Adventures of Con Sawyer and Hucklemary Finn (7-Sep-1985)
Cat's Eye (12-Apr-1985)
Irreconcilable Differences (28-Sep-1984)
Firestarter (11-May-1984) · Charlie McGee
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (26-May-1982) · Gertie
Altered States (12-Dec-1980) · Margaret Jessup
Bogie (4-Mar-1980)
Appears on the cover of:
People, 23-Feb-2004, DETAILS: Wow! New Drew -- Called "Fatso" as a kid, the 50 First Dates star talks about losing 20 lbs., marriage, "mistakes" and her dream of starting a family (photo by Kenneth Willardt)
AKA Drew Blyth Barrymore
