BEST MASCARA

EVER

DREWBARRYMORE

INSIDER’S GUIDE TO PARIS

RA RA RIOTWAVVES. KYLIE MINOGUE.

LOVELYDENIMBRANDS.

NYLON

j brand.levi’s.guess.nobody.wrangler.gap.& more.

reasons we love jeans :

211

THE DENIM ISSUE APRIL 2011

SWEETANDLOW

DOWN

she may have shed her

wildchild reputation long ag, but

is still kicking ass-as an actress,

director, mediA mogul,

and occasional stuntwoman.

drewbarrymore

rew Barrymore’s office, in a charming ivory duplex in West Hollywood, hangs a picture of Pippi Longstocking, the fictional heroine of Astrid Lindgren’s 1945 children’s book about a sassy, selfeducated nine-year-old who lives alone in a Swedish village save for a monkey and a horse. Inside, Barrymore is sitting cross-legged on a round, floral carpet. “I was Pippi Longstocking for Halloween once,” I tell her. Barrymore looks up at me and smiles win-ningly. “Gh, I am going to like you,- she says, getting up. “Sorry, I just have to get naked for a second because I’m wearing sweaty gym clothes.” She disappears around a corner and remerges a few moments later in a soft, gray sweater and loose, bleach-splattered jeans. Bar-rymore sits back down on the floor, crossing her legs underneath herself. Her dirtyblond hair is pulled back in a ponytail and her slightly tanned and even skin looks to be makeup-free. There are no chairs-her office is more like a library, filled with bookshelves instead of a desk or a computer-so I sit across from her, as if we’re about to play cards. She drinks cola through a straw out of a big Styrofoam cup. Pippi Longstocking was my role model as a kid,~ she says, smiling to reveal a bottom row of teeth that aren’t quite straight. “Thank God for that redheaded creature because she wasn’t worried about age or gender or strength or ability. She just felt like anything was possible. She could do anything. And that was such an affecting thing in my psyche as a kid. It really formed me.” Barrymore, it’s safe to say, is one of the world’s most famous actresses-one of the few who can go by first name alone. This month she stars in Going the Distance, a romantic comedy. that’s sure to be a box office hit, further cementing her status as an American Sweetheart alongside Sandra Bullock and Cameron Diaz. Considering she was born into

the business, it’s easy to write off Barrymore’s success. But, like Pippi, she’s a scrapper, a hardworker who has achieved most of her dreams on her own. She may have made her TV debut before her first birthday, but she also entered rehab when she was only 13 years old. Recovering from something like that-and going on to start her own production company, star in dozens of celebrated films, win a Golden Globe, and become a director-takes much more than family connections. Birthright can you only take you so far. There has never been a famiy of actors quite like the Barrymores, whose his-tory in the trade dates back to the early 19th century. Barrymore’s great-great-grandfather, a comedic actor named John Drew, emigrated to America from Ireland and married the Londonborn Louisa Lane in 1850 and together they opened a theater in Philadelphia. Louisa was a well-known actress in her own right; one of her co-stars was none other than John Wilkes Booth.Louisa’s daughter and Barrymore’s great-grandmoth-er, Georgie Drew, made her stage debut at 15, and later married actor Maurice Barry-more. Their son, John Sidney Blyth, began working at14 and had an unparalleled box

d

152

office run with a 10-picture, multi-million dollar contract he signed in 1932. His funeral, in 1962, was attended by w.e. Fields, Gretta Garbo, and Er-rol Flynn. Many people know the story from this point. John Sidney Blyth’s son, John Drew Jr., and his wife, Jaid, were not exactly PTA members,and Barrymore had an aston-ishingly salacious childhood, even by today’s standards. She was smoking, drinking, and passing out at Studio 54 by the time she was 10 years old. During all of this, she also managed to become a promis-ing actress, starring in her first big-screen feature, Altered States, at five and beating out hundreds for the role of Gertie in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, when she was seven. In 1990, Barrymore authored a postrehab autobi-ography, Little Girl Lost, with a People magazine correspon-

dent named Todd Gold. The book-authorized by Jaid-reads like an E! True Hollywood Story. Barrymore’s personal narrative is interrupted every few paragraphs with long asides from Gold, who comes across as a sympathetic, but ob-solescent guidance counselor,insisting that Jade was unaware that her daughter was doing drugs during their late nights out together. Barrymore eman-cipated herself from her par-ents shortly after the book was published. Little Girl Lost was on my older sister’s bookshelf when we were growing up, right next to Judy Blume’s Let-ters to Judy, a collection of tales of traumaincest, teen preg-nancy, kidnapping-sent to the author by her readers. Upon hearing this fact, Barrymore’s expression becomes serene. You have to not pretend to be perfect, because that’s not only boring as fuck, but it’s just not real,~ she says, fid-dling with a chain around her neck that holds multiple gold charms, including a Cartier Love wedding band. “So I feel so liberated in that way. I just really want to be true to myself. That’s essential in life. I would never be able to put on a charade. I would totally fuck it up.”

While she talks, Barrymore absentmindedly massages her left foot (her toenails are dark blue and there is a jailhouse tattoo of a moon on one big toe), cracks her knuckles, and stretches. Everything else in the room is still, every surface covered with artfully arranged items: a typewriter (she col-lects them), a record player, a megaphone, three identical Hacky Sacks lined up in a row. By the window on her right, there’s an empty glass fishbowl. A blue Post-II note stuck to the rim reads R.I.P. “A lot of times in life, there’s a big gap in what you’re supposed to do with work and figuring out who you are and how you’re going to succeed in this world,” Barry-more continues. “Success being only measured by doing what you want to do and what makes you happy-not success as in power-and figuring that out or trying to accomplish that, you realize, takes a tremendous amount of homework and pas-sion and diligence. I happened to go through it from 14 to 19.” A wry smile passes across herface. “I had a big gap in my life where I wasn’t allowed to work at all because no one would hire me, which was great because I think you need that

humility. You have to have everything taken away, or you have to have a major reality check, so that you always ap-preciate what you have.” Most people would not recall being unemployable as “great,” especially not in an in-dustry that doesn’t offer many second chances, and which cor-anates new stars every day. But Barrymore is someone who can see the lesson in every story. In her teens, she appeared in a string of bad movies, receiv-ing more attention for her outrageous behavior (flashing her breasts on the Late Show with David Letterman, posing for Playboy) than her acting prowess. But in 1995, a chance meeting changed her career. While she was filming the high school drama Mad Love, she befriended Nancy Juvonen, who was visiting the set be-cause her brother was work-ing on the film. Barrymore dared Juvonen to move to Los Angeles and start a production company with her. The two ended up launch-ing Rower Films. In the years that followed, some of Bar-rymore’s most successful work has been in Flower produc-tions that she both produced and starred in, including the Charlie’s Angels franchise (a She just felt like anything

was possible. She could do anything. 155

it’s going to be editing room floor crap,” she says, laughing. It’s an attitude that Nanette Burstein, the movie’s director, was thankful for. First of all, [Barrymore is] a tremendously talented actress with really good comic timing, which is hard to find-and she’s so experienced,” says Burstein. “I love the scene when she goes out and gets drunk with her work buddy. She came up with such funny lines when she’s being carried out of the bar that were not in the script. It’s really hard to play drunk.” Barrymore even ended the scene with a face plant “She

does her own stunts,” marvels Burstein. “In that scene, they had to fall out of the bar. In some movies, they would have a stunt person do that. She was like, ‘No way, I’m doing it!’ She’s done much crazier things in Charlie’s Angels.” Barry-more and Long were an item while they were making Going the Distance, and the chemis-try shows on screen. “There’s a lot of honesty here,” says Barrymore. “Justin and I have actually been through this stuff in this case. We wanted to be revealing about what a couple goes through and what their joys are, and honest fucking

laughter-that’s Justin making me laugh for real. And when we’re emotional in a movie, we’ve fucking been there. It’s heart-wrenching, and it’s tough.” Barrymore cocks her head to one side. “l related to the character. She doesn’t want to give up her life and her sense of identity and her dreams and her goals and everything she’s been working towards for a relation-ship-but she also doesn’t want to sacrifice love for a career. I mean, aren’t we all going through that?” She pauses. “I don’t know what the male equivalent is, ‘cause I’m not a

157

I’m in a place in my life where I’m really into reality rather than fantasy.

television show is in the works), Donnie Darko, and Never Been Kissed. Barrymore has increas-ingly taken on more serious roles, like that of Edie Beale in 2009’s television mini-series Grey Gardens, for which she won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actor’s Guild Award. “I think I’ll always keep it mixed up,” she says. “I did romantic comedies throughout my twen-ties, but I’m just not in that place right now where I want to make a movie about waking up and realizing I slept with the CEO of the company and now I’ve got a fake identity or have a sort of Three’s Com-pany moment of like, Oh my God, we’re misunderstanding each other! I’m in a place in my life where I’m really into reality rather than fantasy.” In reality-that is, off-screen-Barrymore has been wearing more hats, including that of director (of 2009’s coming-at-age roller derby heartwarmer Whip It) and as the co-creative director and face of Cover Girl cosmetics (“the whole look we’re presenting is really clean and graphic-it’s just been so much fun”). She’s even an executive producer of VH1 ‘s couples therapy show, Tough Love.

A self-confessed music nut, Barrymore say she still finds time to see bands two or three times a week. But that’s work, too: She’s always thinking about where a song may fit on a film soundtrack. (Whip It has more than 75 music cues, which Barrymore acknowledg-es is “an exorbitant amount). “I saw the xx the other night, they were fucking bril-liant. I saw Miike Snow the other night, fucking brilliant,” she says, nodding her heademphatically at the fucking brilliants. “I’m always listening to music. I’m just constantly learning and researching. “I love my job because I get to, like, train for roller derby or train for Kung Fu or learn about journalism or learn about Greenpeace and whales and scuba diving and activism and marine biology. I get to live in the mind frame of EdieBeale in Grey Gardens and do nothing but live in that temple of what that person thought and felt, and read her journals every night and shut out the world. I get to have these very different lives.” Which is not to say that Barrymore doesn’t have her own expertise and experience to bring to her work. In her new film, Going The Distance,

she plays Erin, a 29~year-old aspiring journalist interning in New York City for the summer, who meets Garrett (real-life on-again~off~again boyfriend Justin Long) at a bar and challenges him to a game of Centipede. (WI had a Centi-pede machine in my house for years,” says Barrymore. “It’s my favorite game.”) Despite intending the relationship to be just a summer fling, the two end up embarking on a long-distance relationship. “I relate to the long distance of it all immensely. My whole life has been a long distance relation-ship because of my job,” she says, shrugging. “I’m always in different places. Ironically, with all this, We’re now more connected than ever w.ith technology,’ I don’t think we’ve ever been far-ther apart. I think it’s bullshit. Everyone feels more connected but they’re weirdly discon-nected.” Going the Distance does a great job of illustrating this fact, most clearly in a scene where Barrymore and Long’s characters attempt to have phone sex. “You know, phone sex going awry is just a funny concept to me and I thought, This is going to be one of those scenes where we have to go balls out, and if it doesn’t work,

I don’t know what the equivalent is, ‘cause I’m not a guy.

guy. But certainly I know that’swhat my girlfriends and I all go through. So I read this [script] and I was like, I love this. It’s not about mistaken identity or trying to become the president of the company or being in a fucking time machine. And I still like watching fantasy movies, and I might go back to making them, but to me this one is really fucking funny, but it’s really fucking reaL” Happy to do his part in the realnesskeeping department, Justin Long shows his bare ass multiple times in Going the Distance. “It’s funny because usually it’s the girl who’s naked. I was like, ‘That’s right, bitch. The tables are turned!’” says Barrymore with a laugh. “It was a running joke in the movie. It’s actually been trimmed down-there were more. Therewas one cut where you saw everything!” Next up for Barrymore is Whales, the true story of a Greenpeace activist (played by Barrymore) in the late ‘80s. “It’s one of those stories where the world sort of came togeth-er, to put all their agendas aside and kind of understand each other for this intention of sav-ing these three California gray whales,” she says. The movie films in Alaska, where Barry-more has never been. “I hate being cold, but I just love this film so much.” She stops for a minute, like the weather has only just occurred to her. “I’m going to be in the Arctic Circle for four months.” Barrymore

has yet to stock up on thermals. “I never have time for shop-ping,” she admits. “I like it. .. I think? If I ever do go shopping, I hit thrift stores, ‘cause I know I’ll find new pieces arounda job or a shoot. I’ve been wearing the same fucking pair of jeans for 10 years. For a per-son who doesn’t go shopping all the time, I live for clothes. I love combining patterns that aren’t supposed to be to-gether and layering and dress-ing for different moods. Some days it’s preppy, some days it’s super punkrocker, some days it’s girly, some days it’s grunge. I just think you have to play the character that you’re feel-ing that day.” Now practically sprawled out on the floor in her denim and cashmere, it seems like today she can be character-ized as comfortable. “I’ve been raised in costume houses,” she says. “There’s such a discrepancy between the fucking runway and the red carpet. Everyone has to play it so safe, it’s so boring! I love the runway. There’s so much art and drama and fucking groovy-ness and it’s so inspiring. God forbid anyone takes a risk in Hollywood. They get crucified, and it just shouldn’t be that way.” For someone who had such a rough-and publicchild-hood, Barrymore is remarkably optimistic. She has continued to evolve as an actress-curbing her famous tendency to speak out of one side of her mouth for Grey Gardens-and has demonstrated tremendous

business acumen (Flower Films has grossed well over a billion dollars). When she talks, she peppers her speech with the phrase “...but here’s the good news,” as if she has already processed and eschewed any negative idea before it reaches her lips. “I seem to keep find-ing fact in the polarity in life,” she says. “Really, if there’s positive, there’s negative. But good news: If there’s negative, there’s positive. I just feel like I’m surviving and understand-ing those truths and embel-lishing and lovin the positive and trying to navigate and be OK with the fact that there just is negative. That’s the way of life.” Another sip of soda, another smile. Now, Barrymore is do-ing what she loves and tak-ing on new, exciting projects all the time. She recently started writing short stories and constantly finds inspira-tion in the books that line the shelves of her office. One of her favorites is Tom Robbins’s post-modern fairy tale Still Life With Woodpecker. When Barrymore starred in 2004’s 50 First Dates, she requested that her character-whose memory loss necessitates that her beau, played by Adam Sandler, court her every day be reading the book each morning. “Not only is it my favorite book,” she says, putting down her cup, “but the book is about-it says on page two How do you make love stay?” It was apropos on several levels.”

159