Drew Barrymore: The Return of Drew

Barrymore, who once donned boy's drag for a magazine photo spread and who cuts a dashing figure in the vintage men's suits she sports around town, can throw off sophisticated, androgynous heat worthy of Marlene Dietrich. Now, anyone who's read a tabloid or newsweekly in the last five years knows her history of rifling through such young lads as both sons of Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti, one of the De Laurentiis kids, Corey Haim, Corey Feldman and Leland Hayward, with whom she lived for almost a year. She's even sent a very favorably-received mash note to Jason Priestley.

But could she ever see herself being with a woman? "I mean, I loooove men," she observes, spewing more smoke rings. "I'm utterly fascinated by them. But I think I'm even more fascinated by women because I'll never truly understand a man. I can totally see how women fall in love with women because it's like exploring yourself. I've wished sometimes that I could be a man, so I could take a woman. I don't know if that's why I'm always in men's clothes. I really have a male mentality. Sometimes my mother says I was really meant to be a boy--that it starts from my name and goes to the clothes, right through to my whole mental outlook."

Such candor might help explain why Barrymore, who calls herself "a very old soul with a young heart," and such important figureheads in her life as Steven Spielberg, her forever young, forever presexual godfather, may have come to a fork in the road. More about him later. It's near midnight now and Barrymore, racing us down streets in her new black BMW, is talking about the importance of family to her. In her book, Little Girl Lost, she poignantly describes growing close to her movie coworkers but, then, when the productions ended "being torn from them without any consideration of how much I needed their companionship." It's easy to read her life as a search for parenting. When she mentions William Hurt, with whom she made Altered States, her first movie, she says he was "like a father to me."

George C. Scott and Martin Sheen on Firestarter were "uncles." Ryan O'Neal (whom she loved) and Shelley Long (whom she didn't) on Irreconcilable Differences were like "nightmare parents, who constantly fought."

Right now, though, Barrymore is talking about her real father. We're zipping along in her car, bucking stinging cold headwinds, and, though I take it she usually pays little attention to such details as red lights (we've run two) and stop signs (who's counting?), her driving betrays her runaway emotions. John Drew Barrymore--the handsome, volatile son of the greatest Hamlet of his day, who was also the star of Grand Hotel and Twentieth Century--began an abortive movie career in 1950 while still in his teens, and later landed in jail for drunken driving and marijuana possession. Though Drew's mother Ildiko left him before she was born, Drew as a tot suffered at her father's hands--like the time he hurled her against a wall. For years, Drew and her father didn't speak. Clearly, it's taken a lot of therapy for her to admit, "In a flash, I can be an incredibly sour person for all the stuff I've had to go through at such a young age--for all the pain I got from my father, with whom I've had an impossible battle my whole life."

As Drew drives, her gaze darts toward tumble-down, beat-looking street people huddling in doorways, hunkered down under cardboard. "Sometimes, I can't even hold a conversation with him because he's so out in the ether, you know? Since I was born, he's never worn shoes because, in the planet he's on, intelligent people know not to wear shoes. He has actually gone into another dimension and stays there. You cannot go to his level and he will not invite you in. He's out somewhere, crazy, with blue eyes that just suck you in, riding around barefoot with a torn-up duffel bag on a little bicycle. I sometimes wonder where I got all my shit from, until I think for one second of his name or his face. Then, I no longer wonder."

For three weeks now, her father hasn't returned her calls--which she must first channel through a friend. "On the one hand, it's really hurting me on the level of 'Why isn't my Daddy calling me back?' On another level, I'm like 'John, what's up? Why are you fucking dicking me around?'" But she has something urgent to say to him. "I know that he isn't going to be around for much longer," she says, haltingly. "On the one hand, that makes me feel like I should totally distance myself from him. On the other hand, I want to be as close to my father as possible. You know, for so long after my grandfather died, I beat myself over the head that I did not get the chance to truly tell him one last time that I loved him. I don't feel that it's important for me to tell my father, 'You've totally fucked up my life. Bye. See ya.' But as crazy as he is, when you say something to him from the heart, in time it will register. I just want to say something simple: 'You're my father. I love you.'"

It's early morning, and we're sharing a table in one of those storefront coffeehouses that have sprung up around Hollywood like stripmalls. A woman at a nearby table is feeding two-buck croissants to a mangy Chihuahua on her lap; a guy in a Sufi turban is muttering four-letter words to his laptop computer as he works on a script. Barrymore wants to talk about her godfather, Steven Spielberg. "I've only seen him maybe three times in the past eight months," she says of the director whose E.T. made her a star, as she slicks back her hair, eyes hard and shiny.

"Growing up, I practically lived at his beach house. He was the only person I considered to be my father figure, the only man that was ever close to me the whole time I was growing up. Before his first child, Max, was born, he said: 'You'll always be my first child.' Now that I'm older, we're not as close and it's a hard pain I have to deal with. I've gotten older and it's incredibly hard for him to accept. I walked into his office a couple of months ago wearing red lipstick and he made me take it off right there. On the one hand, I'm like: This is my father. I can't say no to him. On the other hand, I got really angry and wanted to stand up once and for all and say, 'I have grown up. I wear red lipstick. It's my style.'

I looked at his picture recently on a magazine cover at the newsstand and started crying because it doesn't feel like he's my father anymore. And this is a man I would have done anything for, who felt like the one person I could really depend on. It's hard because I love him so much." Her anguish over the relationship is palpable. She takes minutes to regain her composure.

Suddenly Drew says she wants to switch topics. We don't succeed, really, but she doesn't seem to realize that. Not at first. She tells me about auditions, how she hates them and how, as a kid, she went up for and lost Annie, just as, more recently, she was passed over for Heathers, Great Balls of Fire!, Cry-Baby, Edward Scissorhands, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Cape Fear--four of which she lost to Winona Ryder. "When I was growing up, I was one step behind her while she was getting everything," she says.

"When she got Great Balls of Fire! and she was 18 years old playing 13, I was like, 'I'm 13. So, why I've watched other actresses take parts right out of my hands because they're older. You can't help hating your competition and any actress who says they don't get jealous is lying. I mean, people think Julia Roberts is so wonderful because she's tall and pretty and all she does is shake her ass and smile. Believe me, I can shake my ass real well and lots of us have decent smiles. I'm sure people get pissed when I beat them out of things, but, when you don't lie, you think: 'That bitch.'"

Barrymore gets so riled up about the career moves of one of her rivals that she... well, let her tell it. "There was one actress in particular whom I could not stand," she says quietly, of one of the hottest women in town. "Anytime I saw her, anytime she got a role, I hated her. I wanted to kill her. The time and energy I spent on hating this person was ridiculous. I was in Hawaii and I picked up a rock and pictured it as being her. I said, 'Fuck you. I hate you. I'm so jealous of you. I wish I had what you have sometimes. But you're you and I'm me.' I threw the rock into the ocean. I mean, how stupid is that? But, you know, I've never had a resentment against this girl since." Not even when she snags good roles? "Well," she says, blushing, "that rock does keep bobbing up, that's for sure."

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