Drew Barrymore was only seven years old when millions of moviegoers around the world came to know her face.
As Gertie in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, she was funny, expressive and effortlessly memorable. The 1982 film turned the young actress into one of the most recognizable children in Hollywood almost overnight.
But behind that extraordinary success, Barrymore’s childhood was moving in a far more dangerous direction.
Before she had even reached her teenage years, she was spending time in adult nightlife environments, drinking and eventually struggling with drugs. By 13, her situation had deteriorated so badly that her mother placed her in an institution, where Barrymore would remain for roughly a year and a half.
By 14, she had legally separated from her parents and was attempting to live independently in Los Angeles.
Hollywood, meanwhile, had largely stopped believing in her.
Years later, Barrymore would remember the brutal reversal: she had gone from being one of the most famous children in America to being treated as someone the industry considered unemployable.
Yet the story did not end there.
She rebuilt her career piece by piece, eventually becoming a romantic-comedy star, producer, entrepreneur and television host. Along the way, she formed one of Hollywood’s most enduring screen partnerships with Adam Sandler and created a production company that gave her greater control over her career.
Today, Barrymore’s journey looks less like a conventional celebrity success story than a case study in surviving childhood fame, losing nearly everything and finding a way back.
Fame Arrived Before She Was Old Enough to Understand It
Barrymore was born into one of America’s best-known acting families.
Her father, John Drew Barrymore, belonged to the legendary Barrymore theatrical dynasty, which included stage and screen stars John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore.
Acting arrived in Drew’s life almost immediately.
According to Biography, Barrymore began working in a commercial when she was still a baby. Then came the role that changed everything: Steven Spielberg cast her as Gertie in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The movie was released in 1982, when Barrymore was seven.
For many young actors, appearing in one enormous movie might be an exciting chapter in an otherwise normal childhood.
Barrymore’s experience was different.
Celebrity became the environment in which she grew up.
In a 2015 interview with The Guardian, Barrymore reflected on how dramatically her life accelerated after E.T.. She had already been working since infancy, but suddenly she was moving through a world populated by adult celebrities, entertainment executives, parties and expectations normally reserved for people decades older than she was.
Her mother, Jaid Barrymore, also served as her manager.
That relationship blurred boundaries between childhood and show business.
Barrymore later wrote in her memoir Wildflower that her mother took her to Studio 54 rather than giving her anything resembling a conventional school-age routine. In an extract published by The Guardian, Barrymore specifically recalled being taken to the legendary nightclub while still a child.
Biography also reports that she was going to Studio 54 at about nine years old, where she was exposed to smoking, alcohol and drugs.
What looked from the outside like glamorous access to celebrity culture was increasingly dangerous for a child who had little separation between adult nightlife and everyday life.
Drugs, Rehab and an 18-Month Institution Stay
By the time Barrymore was entering adolescence, the consequences had become impossible to ignore.
Accounts of her childhood have long documented serious alcohol and drug problems before she became a teenager.
In its extensive 2015 profile, The Guardian reported that Barrymore had already experienced rehab by the age of 12. After relapsing, she entered an institution at 13, where she remained for approximately 18 months and was treated for alcohol and drug addiction.
Barrymore herself has never romanticized that period.
She described being deeply angry and out of control.
Her mother ultimately decided that she could no longer manage the situation and had Barrymore placed in the facility.
For a 13-year-old accustomed to extraordinary freedom, the change was severe.
Barrymore told The Guardian that she could not simply leave. The experience involved strict discipline and isolation from the life she had previously known. Yet, with the perspective of adulthood, she has said that the structure ultimately helped her.
Rather than portraying the institution only as something done to her, Barrymore has repeatedly acknowledged that her life needed to change.
She described the experience as humbling and said that she emerged from it with a greater respect for boundaries and discipline.
That does not erase the pain surrounding the episode.
Barrymore was still a child.
Her parents had not provided the stable environment that most children rely on.
She had become famous before developing the tools necessary to navigate fame.
And by 13, the consequences of that instability had become severe enough that adults concluded she needed to be removed from the life she had been living.
At 14, She Became Legally Independent
What happened next was almost as extraordinary.
The institution ultimately recommended that Barrymore legally separate from her mother.
At the age of 14, she became emancipated by the courts.
Barrymore described the hearing in Wildflower, an excerpt of which was published by The Guardian.
The judge reportedly warned her that although the law could move the clock forward and make her legally responsible for herself, it could never reverse that decision and give her childhood back.
Barrymore said she was ready.
She was declared an adult.
But legal adulthood did not magically give a 14-year-old the practical experience of an adult.
Barrymore moved into an apartment in West Hollywood by herself.
She later admitted that she barely understood basic domestic responsibilities.
She did not know how to properly do laundry.
She struggled to maintain the apartment.
She was frightened living alone.
In her memoir, she recalled mold and disorder accumulating in the apartment while she tried to figure out everyday life without the parents or stable household that might ordinarily teach a teenager how to manage those things.
She also needed money.
Barrymore found work at a coffeehouse near her apartment.
The job was humbling.
This was someone who had once starred in one of the most famous movies ever made, yet she was now trying to understand basic employment outside Hollywood while living alone as a young teenager.
A later Guardian profile summarized this strange chapter: Barrymore moved into an apartment, worked in a coffee shop, learned to do her own laundry and slowly attempted to rebuild her life.
Hollywood Had Written Her Off
The personal difficulties were only one part of the problem.
Barrymore also discovered that the movie industry that had celebrated her as a child no longer wanted her.
In her memoir, she remembered feeling that once people learned about the institution and her addiction problems, she became viewed as “damaged goods.”
She emphasized that she had not been unprofessional on sets.
Nevertheless, her reputation had become toxic.
The Guardian’s 2015 interview described Barrymore at 14 as effectively a Hollywood outcast. Casting directors did not see the child from E.T. anymore; they saw scandal and risk.
Barrymore remembered the experience of auditioning while people treated her as if she had no business expecting another chance.
“To have such a big career at such a young age, then nothing for years” was, as she later explained, an extraordinary reversal to experience before adulthood.
But one detail in the popular version of Barrymore’s story deserves clarification.
Her comeback did not begin suddenly with The Wedding Singer in 1998.
It started earlier.
By approximately 17, Barrymore was finding work again.
The Guardian notes that Poison Ivy in 1992 helped put her back on screen. She then appeared in projects including Bad Girls, Boys on the Side, Batman Forever, Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You and Wes Craven’s Scream.
So The Wedding Singer did not rescue a completely inactive career.
What it did was arguably even more important.
It helped redefine what kind of star Drew Barrymore could become.