Drew's Confessions

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Throwing her bag down on a banquette amid a flurry of hellos, Drew excuses herself briefly and pops, spritelike, around the tables, charmingly and effectively getting the measure of everyone in the room. "Right," she says on return. "I need a drink."

Drew Barrymore is and isn't what you'd expect. Her Drewishness is evident, but while one might assume she skips through life, a metaphorical daisy tucked behind her ear, she is made of much tougher stuff. She didn't become the second-highest-earning female in Hollywood (in a four-way tie, along with best friend Cameron Diaz, at $15 million a film) and a producer whose films have earned more than $1.2 billion at the box office armed with nothing but her charm. This particular flower has a very strong stem.

"I first met Drew at this magazine shop in Beverly Hills," remembers Diaz, who was then an unknown 16-year-old model, while Drew, then 14, was already infamous. (The two sealed their friendship a decade later, kicking butt with a smile in the Charlie's Angels films.) "I kind of knew [about her], you know," Diaz says. "I wasn't really starstruck, but I felt like I knew her in a different way, as we all do when we watch people on television. But I remember she stuck up for me when this guy was being aggressive. She was like, "'Hey!'"

"Ah, yes, I still feel very territorial with her," Drew says on hearing the anecdote from "Le Poo," as she refers to Diaz. We've moved upstairs to a friend's hotel room, where Drew grabs a bottle of Sancerre from the minibar and lights the first of many cigarettes. The self-described vagabond child remembers, "At the time, I was working the door at a nightclub to pay my rent because I was living on my own in my first apartment and I wasn't working. No one would hire me."

There you have it: the Drew story. What is a quick aside from the now 31-year-old Hollywood icon is a poignant snapshot of her Bizarro World childhood. The CliffsNotes version: born to hands-off parents Jaid and John in 1975; reaches global fame at seven as Gertie in E.T.; first drink at nine; drug rehab at 13 and again at 14; autobiography, Little Girl Lost, by 15. It's hard to compute how this wise, funny, and self-deprecating woman turned out normal at all. But then Drew has grown into her life. "She's been in the spotlight since she could start thinking. It's put her in a survival bubble," says her other best friend and producing partner at Flower Films, Nancy Juvonen. "I think I got lucky by having been in this job since I was so young, because it's so normal to me," Drew says. "I can't imagine if it happened to me midway through life."

Midlife in Drew Barrymore time is, of course, the teens. And on some teens, the spotlight burns just a little bit brighter. On current tabloid scorchers like the reportedly hard-partying Lindsay Lohan, she lets out a thoughtful sigh. "I know Lindsay, and I like her very much. You just have to try to be as graceful as you can. You know, you flub, you flub. And that's life.... I think, do what you want, but just be professional." She stresses that the times have changed, too. "When I was younger, I was exposed [in the media] in many ways, but there wasn't the same kind of frenzy." Again, it's all high school. "Now if you go out and get trashed at Bobby the footballer's party on Saturday night and everyone at school knows, I think that's pretty much the equivalent of Us Weekly." She starts to laugh. "God, I never thought I'd be the old houndstooth, you know?"

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After 25 years in the spotlight, Drew notes that the attention she receives is more pally than insidious. "I always feel like people approach me like I'm totally their sister's friend or something. It's so cool. How lucky am I?"

This, in a nutshell, is the secret to Drew's success. We all want her to be our best friend, onscreen or off. After nearly a decade's worth of movies celebrating high school (Never Been Kissed), girl power (Charlie's Angels), plain old love, the '80s (The Wedding Singer), and amnesia (50 First Dates), Drew has sealed her place in our yearbooks. It's easy to forget that her early movies (Firestarter, Poison Ivy) were often dark, twisted tales in which, among other things, she set things on fire with her eyes. "I wasn't as bad as people thought I was," she says. "I just felt kind of dark and rebellious. But in my early 20s, I realized that what I liked about life was the celebration of it."

Her latest film, Music and Lyrics, a romantic comedy with Hugh Grant, fits right into that category. Grant plays a washed-up pop star who will be given a new lease on his career if he writes a hit song. Drew comes in to water his plants ... and changes the score of his life. As you'd expect from a Barrymore-Grant pairing, it's banter-iffic. "Hugh makes me laugh so hard," Drew says. "He's such an odd bird, and I love him so much for it." Her dream collaborator: Sacha Baron Cohen (of Borat infamy). "I like smart, weird, funny, and sharp. The guys I had crushes on growing up were Ted Koppel and David Letterman."

Ah, Letterman. The reader may recall a certain flashing incident in 1995. "How can I top that?" she says with a wry smile. "I was so out-of-body when that moment happened. Afterward, I said to Nancy, 'Did I just do that?' and she was like, 'I think you did.' I was like, 'Do you think anyone's gonna notice?'" The moment added another boldface chapter to the Drew story. "You know, I couldn't do anything like that now. But have the blast of your youth, you know? Go for it."

Drew is rather enjoying feeling her age. "I've heard a lot of women talk about that 'Saturn return' phenomenon at 28. I feel like I'm having it now. I'm like, 'Okay, I've done this, I've done that. Now what?'" A constant is her five-year relationship with Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti, 26. "You need to reinvent your relationship if you want to continue being together. Right now I'm in a phase of 'I'm not even your girlfriend. I'm your best friend who is madly in love with you.' I'm really interested in watching him right now. The longest I've ever been with someone was like two to three years, so I'm in uncharted waters. Right now I'm more into championing him as a human being than gushing love for him."

Though they share a home in New York, the couple's movie star-rock star schedules are both blessing and curse. "There have been days when we've been like, 'Man, if we could just come home every night and eat Chinese on the couch and watch movies.' But then you get into that routine and you're like, 'God, I miss missing you.'"

And while, as the saying goes, Drew couldn't choose her family (her father died of cancer two years ago; she sees Jaid occasionally), she has invested everything in choosing her friends. "I was never popular in school. I tried to cheerlead with the cheerleading squad once," she says with a sardonic smile and a Heathers-like drag on a cigarette. "I wasn't allowed on the team, but I just tried to practice with them, and they told me to get the hell out of there."

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Juvonen says, "I think it's such a courageous thing to look around and say, 'If I don't get to be one of the lucky ones who are born with a family, how do I put that in my life?'" Diaz adds, "She values her friends because of what she's gone through. They're the people who she can trust and keep close to her."

Drew and Cameron are in the unique situation of being able to compare their days at the office: "It's like we work at the same store, you know?" Drew says. Except these two salesgirls get their photo taken a little more than most. "We can call each other and cry that we're being followed around all day. But the ego is out of it. It's just that it's happening and it sucks."

Lately, Drew's picture has been taken in far more fashionable circumstances. Having starred in campaigns for Lancôme and Missoni, she is now the face of designer Giles Deacon's new collection for British high-street chain New Look. "I honestly can't believe anyone would ever hire me. I am like the girl on the couch who eats the Chinese food. I don't have the body type. I don't have the daily stylishness. I can't believe they're letting a funny jester like me get involved in fashion."

Drew's favorite uniform remains jeans and a T-shirt, found at Urban Outfitters or her guiltless fashion pleasure when she's in London, Topshop. "What I'm nuts for is sensible real clothes. Whenever, you know, John Galliano [a close friend] gives me a dress to wear, I feel like Cinderella." She laughs about meeting Oscar de la Renta at an intimidating fashion soiree last year: "I was introducing him to someone, and I was like, 'This is Oscar de la Renta.' Oh, yeah, I said it, Oscar de la Renta." The designer was so charmed, he dreamed up one of Drew's most memorable looks, the black strapless column she wore to New York's Costume Institute gala last May.

Though Drew looks better and fitter than ever due to a new love of running ("Well, it depends on the day!"), she's frank about her struggles. "I am constantly battling my weight. I want to eat whatever I want and get away with it, but I can't. I want to wear whatever I want, but I can't. Like when [Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott] shot me for the Missoni campaign, they were like, 'Darling, move your hips to the side, please,'" she says, laughing hysterically.

Drew's only beauty recommendation: "Zit cream. It's my whole MO. I get zits all the time, and they piss me off more than anything in the world. I've used Proactive, I've used every face wash, acne cream, anything. It's so funny because people say, 'Oh, you've got such great skin,' and I'm like, 'Are you kidding?'" She laughs at the irony of simultaneous pimples and wrinkles. "When I see older age hitting, I go, 'God, I should have appreciated not having puffy eyes in the morning.' And, you know, it used to take me five minutes to do my makeup, but now it takes 10. That's an interesting phenomenon."

Contemplating how skin care falls into the jigsaw of existence, she lights a last cigarette. "You know, it's all just humor. Don't take life so seriously. Don't take fashion too seriously. Don't take the movie industry too seriously. Don't take love and your relationship so goddamned heavy all the time. Laugh, laugh, laugh. Life is high school and it's small and everybody talks about everybody, so just laugh your ass off."

With that, Drew puts on some lip gloss, artfully musses her hair, and heads back down to the lobby. She bids a swift farewell to Messrs. De Niro and Penn and sets out through the streets of SoHo. A couple of people give her a glance, but she just keeps moving.

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