Drew Barrymore Talks Boys, Breakups, and Breaking Out
April 7 2009, Published 5:01 a.m. ET
She comes from one of Hollywood’s oldest families and has paved a career to die for, but Drew Barrymore thinks she still has a lot of learning to do. In an interview with Elle magazine the actress opens up about her relationships, her career, and sacrificing her life for a role.
“It’s hard to be with someone for five years and say, This isn’t going to work,” Barrymore revealed about her relationship with Fabrizio Moretti. “But it was a time in my life where I finally just said, I can’t live for anyone else anymore. I have to be on my own.”
After decades in the business, she’s ready to take some risks again: “I’m in my thirties now, and I really want to try all the things that I haven’t gotten to do yet, like directing, and doing a drama. I’ve produced and gotten to do a lot of optimistic love stories, and that was so where I was at for 10 years in my life. And now I feel like, Okay, now I know how to do that. I wanted to get scared again.”
The actress recently threw herself fully into the role of Little Edie for the film Grey Gardens, going to extreme lengths like shutting herself off from the world- all to prove to the director, who preferred other actresses for the role, that she was the right pick:
“I knew this was not a courtesy meeting, but not far from it. I didn’t want to come in there like a hungry freak. But I also felt every second counting. So – polite conversation, then he started looking through my binder, and I saw his demeanor change, actually noticing all the hard work I had put into it. So I just put it out there. I said, ‘Look – I have all of this inside of me, and I promise you that I will change my face to be her. I will learn how to stop talking out of the side of my mouth. I will go to school to relearn body language. I will shut out the world. I will not talk to my friends. I will give up my life for this, because I don’t think you can play this character and have a social life and balance the two mentalities. I won’t act. I’ll become this person.’”
“I did what I do when I have a big challenge lying in my path. I go to school. I shut the windows, the shades come down, the phone gets turned off, I don’t go out – I study.”
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