Drew Barrymore hosted Saturday Night Live at seven and was emancipated at fourteen
Drew Barrymore won the part of Gertie in E.T. after telling Steven Spielberg she fronted a punk band. The film became the biggest earner of the 1980s, and at 7 she became the youngest person ever to host Saturday Night Live. By 13 she was in rehab; by 15 she had her own flat.
She was born in Culver City on February 22, 1975, into perhaps the most storied acting dynasty in America. Her grandfather John Barrymore was arguably the most admired actor of his day, and Lionel and Ethel Barrymore were her great-uncle and great-aunt. Even her names are inherited: Drew from great-grandmother Georgie Drew, Blythe from the original surname of the great-grandfather who became Maurice Barrymore. Her mother was born to Hungarian refugees in a displaced persons camp in West Germany. Her father, whom she described as abusive, left when she was six months old. Spielberg is her godfather; Sophia Loren is one of her godmothers.
Fame came impossibly early. She shot a dog food advertisement at eleven months, and after E.T. she played a fire-starting girl in the 1984 Stephen King adaptation Firestarter. Her childhood then went badly wrong. While still a child she was often out at Studio 54, went into rehab at thirteen, and spent eighteen months in a psychiatric hospital in Van Nuys. After a suicide attempt at fourteen she stayed three months with the singer David Crosby and his wife, who wanted her around people committed to sobriety. A juvenile court then granted her emancipation. She told the story in her 1990 memoir Little Girl Lost.
Her screen comeback in the 1990s mixed provocation with smart choices. She personally asked to be in Wes Craven's Scream and was signed to play the heroine, but other commitments shrank her part to the victim in its opening scene; the film earned 173 million dollars worldwide. When she posed for Playboy in 1995, Spielberg sent her a quilt for her twentieth birthday containing the photographs, retouched by his art department so she appeared fully clothed.
The Wedding Singer, costing 18 million dollars, took in 123.3 million, and her company Flower Films produced Never Been Kissed and the Charlie's Angels films. She rescued Donnie Darko with company money when its production was in trouble, and it later became a cult hit on DVD. She won a Golden Globe for Grey Gardens, directed Whip It in 2009, and has hosted a daytime talk show since 2020.
Source: Drew Barrymore
