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Rise to Fame
E.T. made her a household name at seven, and Hollywood almost ate her alive before she turned thirteen. She started drinking at nine, was smoking weed and getting blacklisted by producers by twelve, entered rehab at thirteen, and got legally emancipated from her parents at fourteen. She came back anyway, spending the mid-nineties picking carefully through Poison Ivy, Boys on the Side, and Scream rather than chasing prestige. When Charlie's Angels hit in 2000, she wasn't just starring in it. She'd produced it.
In the Spotlight
The Drew Barrymore Show launched in 2020 and quickly became one of the stronger performers in syndicated daytime, renewed through a sixth season despite the rocky start. In 2023 she tried to restart production during the WGA strike, announced it publicly, and then reversed course after writers started picketing outside the studio. Critics latched onto that as a character statement. The show survived it. These days her public image is warm, relentless positivity, which some people find charming and others find exhausting.
Side Notes
She's the granddaughter of John Barrymore, so Hollywood was always going to have opinions about her. Most of those opinions turned out to be wrong. Her production company, Flower Films, launched in 1995 with partner Nancy Juvonen and produced Charlie's Angels, 50 First Dates, and Donnie Darko, among others. She directed Whip It in 2009, which didn't set the box office on fire but showed she had more interests than being someone else's leading lady. Her three marriages ended in divorce, the first after a few months, which suggests she has better instincts about what to produce than about who to marry.