Drew Barrymore Has Always Had a Complicated Relationship With Her Parents

May 2024 · 5 minute read

Who are Drew Barrymore's parents? She didn't have the most productive relationship with her dad and mom as a kid and as an grownup. Learn extra right here.

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Most other folks most probably know that Drew Barrymore turned into a family name for her function as Gertie in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial when she used to be just 5 years previous. These days — following a rough patch in her youth and into her 20s — Drew is an accomplished actress, director, manufacturer, entrepreneur, and communicate display host. What many would possibly not realize, then again, is that Drew was born into a dynasty of actors. Keep reading to be told more about her parents.

Drew Barrymore's parents are John Drew Barrymore and Jaid Barrymore.

Drew's parents are American actor John Drew Barrymore and aspiring actress Jaid Barrymore — who was born Ildikó Jaid Makó in a displaced persons camp in Wet Germany to Hungarian World War II refugees. Her parents have been married from 1971 to 1984; they divorced when Drew was once 9.

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John Drew Barrymore with his son, John Blyth Barrymore.

On Drew's father's aspect of the family, all of her great-grandparents (Maurice and Georgie Drew Barrymore, and Maurice and Mae Costello) and her grandparents, John Barrymore and Dolores Costello, had been actors. Out of her three older half-siblings thru her father, her brother John Blyth Barrymore could also be an actor. So it makes sense that Drew ended up in Hollywood, too.

Drew Barrymore's estranged father struggled with alcohol and drug addiction.

Drew's father struggled with addiction right through his existence. He used to be sent to jail for ownership of substances after a car crash in 1967 and once more in 1969. By the mid-70s, he had stopped appearing. Drew's mother in the end kicked him out of the home as a result of his drug addiction, and he remained estranged from his children.

In 2003, Drew moved her father near her house as his health had been deteriorating. She paid his clinical expenses until he died from cancer at age seventy two in 2004.

Source: 60 Minutes Australia/YouTube

In a 2020 Father's Day tribute to her dad, Drew touched upon the imperfect relationship she had with her father.

"My mom chose a wild card for my dad. He was a mad poet hedonist man child!" she wrote via Instagram. "But I understood that as a kid. Somehow I have zero baggage or dad issues. 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. But his wildness runs through me. His gifts are here. His demons to overcome are mine to break!"

Drew persisted, "Both my parents have played a major role in who I am as a parent. And none of it looks perfect. But it functions with so much love. And togetherness. And availability. I don’t have a picture of a dad today to show how great everything was. I have a picture to show what it was. And that is my story. And that is perfect in itself. My dad gave me the gift of life! A wicked sense of humor! And that wildness that I truly do cherish."

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Drew Barrymore's mom despatched her to a psychiatric sanatorium for 18 months when she was once 13.

Jaid began steadily taking Drew to Studio Fifty four when she was once best Nine years previous; it used to be there the place Drew was once presented to medicine. By the time Drew was once 12, she had already been through rehab. At 13, she again started treatment for alcohol and drug habit — however this time via an 18-month psychiatric sanatorium stay.

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After Drew was discharged from the psychiatric sanatorium, she became emancipated at age 15 — something she elaborated on in her memoir Wildflower, in step with The Guardian.

"On the day of my hearing, my mother was there in full support of my emancipation, which would mean me living on my own. I felt so sad, but too much had happened," she wrote. "The judge walked in and the day went on in a blur. People testified, but it wasn’t heavy or dark. It was a way to ask, 'Should this kid become an adult?'"

Drew persisted, "At the end of the day, the judge looked at me and said these words, which stuck with me: 'I can turn the clock forward, but I can never turn it back. Are you ready for that?''

'Yes,' I said.

'OK,' he said with a slight smile, 'I hereby pronounce you an adult.'”

Source: 60 Minutes Australia/YouTube

Drew hardly spoke to her mother for years after that. — however, it seems the actress has since forgiven Jaid for her parenting missteps.

"She most probably felt like she had nowhere to turn," Drew told Howard Stern in February 2021, of her mother's decision to send her to a psychiatric hospital. "And I'm sure she lived with a lot of guilt for years, about creating the monster but then I believe she lived in a lot of ache that I additionally would not communicate to her for a very long time."

She continued, "I will't have her feel unhealthy anymore. I'm certain she's already made the crap out of herself for having a daughter who would not discuss to her. I mean, the pain that I went via from that — I felt so guilty. Denying my mother get entry to to me, it felt like I used to be chopping off the supply of life. It used to be as laborious of a feeling as I've ever skilled. Definitely the worst pain I've ever recognized."

Hopefully, Drew's relationship with her mom is far better nowadays.

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