Tragic Details About Drew Barrymore's Life

There is a case to be made that out of every member of the Hollywood elite, Drew Barrymore has lived the most interesting life. One in a very long line of performers, the star was destined to become famous, and she's made the most of her fame from a very young age. The "E.T." actor socialized with some of the biggest icons of the 20th century, hosted "Saturday Night Live" when she was just 7 years old, and heck, Drew Barrymore even met Princess Diana. Suffice it to say, she has lived a wild life so far.

Furthermore, the star has also managed to remain relevant for decades by keeping her career fresh and finding new opportunities along the way, which is no easy feat in Hollywood. But all that glitters is not gold. For every incredible experience Barrymore has had, she's suffered something worse. These are the tragic details about Drew Barrymore's life. 

The Barrymore family history is long and complicated, full of lore intertwined with Old Hollywood and part of the transition into modern cinema. Drew Barrymore, who was born in 1975, is technically a nepo baby — her father, John Drew Barrymore, was a sought-after actor in the '50s and '60s, and his father and grandfather were both prolific in the entertainment industry. But nepotism for Drew didn't work quite the way it does for most because her father was not around much for her childhood. Drew's parents got divorced in 1984, leaving her to live with her mother, Jaid Barrymore.

Although she admired him, Drew knew that her father, who battled addiction, was not going to be a dependable person in her life from early on. "My dad was a drug addict, and he didn't wear shoes. He was really crazy but like, an awesome character and sort of like Gollum meets Oscar Wilde on drugs," Drew said of her father on an episode of "The Shop" in 2022. "He was just so cool and fascinating and I could tell at a young age, 'Oh this guy is not capable of sh*t.'" Drew has had to reckon with her father's absence, and ultimately she's come to a place of acceptance. "I think I would have liked to have a dad who didn't look so out there. Or who stayed. Or was capable of anything really," the star wrote on Instagram. "But his wildness runs through me. His gifts are here ... I love him not for who I wanted him to be, but for who he was."

By the time she was 7 years old, Drew Barrymore was a Hollywood star. The actor broke through with her role as Gertie in 1982's "E.T.," and for the next several years, she maintained both a busy professional and social life. But neither were particularly healthy, especially her social life. Barrymore spent her days on film sets and her nights at Studio 54, a popular nightclub where the rich and famous partied on end. "I had a mom, but she was more like my best friend. She was like, 'Do you want to go to school and get bullied all day, or do you want to go to Studio 54?' And I was like, 'Yes, absolutely!" Barrymore told Norm MacDonald on his Netflix show (via Today).

The encouragement Barrymore received from her mother led her down a dark path. Before she was a teenager, the actor was addicted to drugs and alcohol. Barrymore was particularly fond of cocaine at the time, despite it causing significant issues in her life. "Nothing would make me have a panic attack and seem like a bigger nightmare. I never did hallucinogenics ... but I drink and I enjoy my life and get out of my own head," Barrymore said of her drug use. But the star has since gotten clean and has no desire to use again. "It's not like I'm this militant person of clarity and presence but [cocaine] literally seems like my worst nightmare right now."

By age 13, Drew Barrymore's life had completely spiraled. The actor was battling addiction and had attempted suicide. Her mother, whom Barrymore believes had no other options, made a drastic choice: She sent her daughter to an inpatient psychiatric hospital. "I think she created a monster and she didn't know what to do with the monster. This was her last gasp, and I really was out of control," Barrymore said on an episode of "The Howard Stern Show" in 2021. As Barrymore described, the facility was no-nonsense. Patients had to either abide by the rules or face the consequences, like spending time in a padded room or getting pinned down onto stretchers. "It was like serious recruitment training and boot camp, and it was horrible and dark and very long-lived, a year and a half," Barrymore told The Guardian of her stay.

Drew Barrymore has shared the truth about going to a psychiatric ward at 13, and it was positive for her in the end. "I needed it. I needed that whole insane discipline. My life was not normal. I was not a kid in school with normal circumstances. There was something very abnormal, and I needed some severe shift," she said. The star credits the hospital for giving her discipline and for giving her lessons that she hadn't gotten from her parents. "It was a very important thing to experience for me. It was very humbling, very quieting. Maybe it was necessary, because I came out of there a more respecting person," she said.

Drew Barrymore's time in an institution also set her on a path of independence. While she was there, the hospital staff suggested that she seek emancipation from her mother and become a legal adult. Barrymore thought it was a good idea, too. "I had to part ways from my mother because we had driven our relationship into the ground. She had lost credibility as a mother by taking me to Studio 54 (so wrong, but so fun) instead of school. And I was out of control due to working since I was 11 months old and what that had done to my childhood," Barrymore wrote in her memoir "Wildflower." Barrymore's mother supported her decision and attended the emancipation hearing. "My mom and I hugged, knowing things would be different, but things were always just too different, and that was why this needed to happen. I walked out an 18-year‑old in the eyes of the state of California," Barrymore said of that day.

Since her emancipation, Barrymore has struggled with her relationship with her mother, but the two have gotten to a positive place in Barrymore's adulthood. The star has since forgiven her mother for the choices she made while Barrymore was a child, and the two are in contact. "I'm really glad there is healing there," Barrymore said on "The Howard Stern Show."

Drew Barrymore's life post-emancipation was not easy. The star was completely responsible for herself. She had to find a place to live and a way to support herself financially, all at the age of 14. Barrymore wanted to act, but her previous battle with addiction left her washed up in the eyes of Hollywood, so show business wasn't an option at the time. "To have such a big career at such a young age, then nothing for years — people going, you're an unemployable disaster — that's a tough trip to have by the time you're 14. To have access to so many things, then to nothing," she told The Guardian. Barrymore found work at a coffee shop within walking distance from her apartment as she wasn't yet able to drive. The coffee shop gig didn't last too long, though. Per Barrymore, she wasn't very good at her job.

Barrymore also had to learn the realities of keeping a home. "I had no idea how to run an apartment at 14. There was fungus growing everywhere, it was a disaster. It was in a dangerous neighborhood and I was so scared to sleep. I had bars on the window and alley cats f*cking 30 feet away. I was so terrified," she said of her living experience. The star had to learn how to do laundry, too, and she turned to a close friend for help.

Drew Barrymore's dating life has been quite interesting. She's dated many men from famous Hollywood faces to relatively unknown people. Drew Barrymore even had a fling with Owen Wilson's brother, Luke. And while all relationships end at some point, some endings are more tragic than others, and Barrymore is familiar with tragic endings in relationships. The star has been engaged and married a handful of times, and each has ended in heartbreak. 

Barrymore's first engagement came when she was just 16 years old. She dated Leland Hayward III, who was 24 at the time, in the early '90s, but they split soon after becoming engaged. A couple of boyfriends later, when Barrymore was 17, she started dating Jamie Walters, who was 23 at the time. Barrymore and Walters got engaged, too, but that relationship didn't last.

When Barrymore was 19 years old, she married Jeremy Thomas. The romance was a whirlwind, and the couple broke up 19 days later. Barrymore abstained from getting engaged for quite a few years after her divorce, but when she was in her mid-20s, the actor married Tom Green. Their marriage only lasted a few months, and it was full of challenges. "[We] were young and kind of idiots ... I didn't know how to manage myself. I've always said I was a woman in the boardroom and a child in the bedroom ... but I didn't know how to handle things in my personal life," Barrymore said of her relationship with Green on an episode of "The Howard Stern Show" (via Facebook).

In 2011, Drew Barrymore found love again. The star began dating Will Kopelman, an art consultant, and things moved quickly. In January 2012, the couple was engaged, married in June, and by September, they had welcomed their first baby, Olive. The duo must have been taken with parenthood, because less than two years later, they shared that they were expecting a second child. Barrymore gave birth to their daughter Frankie in 2014.

Unfortunately for Barrymore, her second pregnancy brought a bout of postpartum depression. "I didn't have postpartum the first time so I didn't understand it because I was like, 'I feel great!' The second time, I was like, 'Oh, whoa, I see what people talk about now. I understand.' It's a different type of overwhelming with the second. I really got under the cloud," Barrymore told People. Trying to strike a balance between work and motherhood didn't make things easier. "I just got right on the idea of, where do I need to be the most? Fifty-fifty would be ideal but life doesn't work like that. Life is messy. It was just really challenging and I felt overwhelmed. I made a lot of decisions and I definitely changed my work life to suit my parenthood," she said, noting that her postpartum depression lasted about six months.

Marriage just hasn't worked out for Drew Barrymore. About two years after giving birth to their second child, Barrymore and Will Kopelman announced that they were getting a divorce. Sources claimed that the two had different ideas about where to live, among other issues, and the stress proved too much for their marriage. Barrymore struggled with the divorce, especially coming to terms with having to change course for her daughters. "After the life I planned for my kids didn't work out — I almost think that was harder than the stuff [I went through] as a kid. It felt a lot more real because it wasn't just me. It was about these kids that I cared so much about," Barrymore told People.

For some, the third time's the charm, but for Barrymore, the third time's the end. The star doesn't envision herself getting married again. In fact, she's adamant that she won't. "Never. Never, never, never. I will never get married again! And I also believe people should not say the word 'never,' and I will never, with a capital N-E-V-E-R, never get married," Barrymore asserted to People.

Drew Barrymore has always been refreshingly honest about her troubled past. As noted, the star battled addiction starting at a young age, and her struggles didn't stay in adolescence. Throughout Barrymore's adult life, she wasn't always totally sober. The actor toyed with different sobriety options, but she fully relapsed with alcohol after she and her third husband, Will Kopelman, divorced. As Barrymore noted, she felt a bit unmoored after her divorce, as it led to several upendings in her life, and she turned to alcohol to cope. But the coping mechanism proved to be unhealthy. Her friends had a tough time watching the relapse, and her therapist dropped her as a client, too.

Eventually, Barrymore's friends intervened. "I knew that if we all stuck with her and gave her the support she needed, she would find her way. I have absolute faith in her," her friend Cameron Diaz told the Los Angeles Times of the support Barrymore's loved ones offered. The actor didn't become completely sober after her friends stepped in, but once she booked her talk show, she decided to stop drinking, and she's been sober ever since, a decision she's especially proud of given her family history. "It's just like, you know what? This didn't work for our family, and I'm going to stop it. I'm going to be the one to break the link in that chain and maybe my kids and their kids will be better off for it," Barrymore told People.

In 2020, Drew Barrymore started a new talk show, "The Drew Barrymore Show." The show has featured guests like her friends Cameron Diaz and Gwyneth Paltrow. She's interviewed important people like Vice President Kamala Harris, and she even had her ex-husband Tom Green on the show. Fans have praised Barrymore for her unique interview style, and the show has been renewed through at least 2026.

But the show's run hasn't been entirely smooth sailing. In 2023, all of Hollywood suffered from a writers' strike, and that left shows like Barrymore's unable to continue, lest they be considered scab work. Amid the strike, Barrymore decided that her show would continue anyway, and she was met with intense backlash for the decision. Due to the backlash, Barrymore reversed her decision. "I have listened to everyone, and I am making the decision to pause the show's premiere until the strike is over," she said on Instagram (via The Hollywood Reporter). "I have no words to express my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt and, of course, to our incredible team who works on the show and has made it what it is today." Barrymore seemed to recover from the incident, but she did lose her head writers because of it.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.