The cast reunited for the movie’s 40th anniversary this week …
And Drew Barrymore offered us an adorable behind-the-scenes insight!
Keep scrolling for the full story.
Now, Drew Barrymore is an icon!
She started out on the big screen at a young age, with E.T. being one of her most notable early performances.
She was a star from very early on.
Barrymore is the daughter of actor John Drew Barrymore Jr. and Ildiko Jaid Barrymore – her great-grandparents Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew and grandparents John Barrymore and Dolores Costello were also actors.
She made her big-screen debut at the age of 5 in Ken Russell’s Altered States.
But of course, her most famous role came 2 years later in 1982’s E.T. the Extraterrestrial.
It was an instant hit.
Shortly after the movie hit screens, Barrymore appeared on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and even became Saturday Night Live’s youngest host.
But stardom wasn’t easy for the actress…
Her mom soon began taking her to nightclubs, and it was at Studio 54 and the China Club that Barrymore started to develop substance abuse issues… before she was even a teenager.
Shocking!
Barrymore was placed in a rehab center, later writing about the experience in her autobiography, Little Girl Lost.
However, after leaving, she quickly went back to old habits…
Her nightlife and constant partying became a popular headline generator for the media.
And sadly, aged fourteen, she tried to take her own life, which landed her back in rehab, followed by a 3-month stay with singer David Crosby and his wife.
“She needed to be around some people that were committed to sobriety,” Crosby said.
Barrymore was forced to grow up at a very early age.
And moved into her own apartment aged fifteen.
It was during this time that she struggled to get work.
Film projects were slow to materialize, though, she did make some minor films, including Irreconcilable Differences, Firestarter, and Cat’s Eye.
But in the ’90s she once again began to get more roles.
Including the likes of Poison Ivy (1992), Guncrazy (1992), and The Amy Fisher Story (1993).
And she made it her mission to put her childlike typecast behind her.
The star posed nude for spreads in Playboy and Andy Warhol’s Interview, and then exposed herself on live TV to a shocked David Letterman during his Late Night show birthday celebration.
She hit headlines for her behavior once again.
That year, the star co-founded a production company, Flower Films — which would go on to produce several big hits. On top of that, she gave a solid performance in the movie Boys on the Side, co-starring with Whoopi Goldberg, and Mary-Louise Parker.
Her fame began to boom again.
The actress earned praise when she co-starred in the popular comedy The Wedding Singer alongside Adam Sandler and in Ever After with Anjelica Huston.
The following year, Barrymore also earned her first credit as an executive producer with the comedy Never Been Kissed, in which she also starred.
As we moved into the ’00s, Barrymore produced and starred in the smash hit flick Charlie’s Angels, performing alongside Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, and Bill Murray.
It was a fan favorite…
Raking in more than $40 million in its opening weekend alone.
She has gone on to achieve so much…
Producing/starring in movies such as Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, 50 First Dates, and He’s Just Not That Into You.
And her success doesn’t just stop at acting.
She became the face of Covergirl Cosmetics and Gucci Jewelry in 2007, followed by being honored as the top pick on People magazine’s “100 Most Beautiful People” list that same year.
Incredible!
She now has 2 kids and has been able to firmly cement her status as a huge player in the movie and modeling industry.
But her most recent accomplishment is her chat show, The Drew Barrymore Show.
It began back in 2020 and has since featured dozens of special guests, with many sharing stories about their lives.
She’s opened up a lot on her podcast.
The actress recently claimed that she could go through years without taking part in intimacy.
According to Entertainment Tonight, the forty-two-year-old guest, Ross Mathews joked, saying he abstained from intimacy during his entire 20s.
“Well, I get abstaining from s*x — I did that my entire 20s,” he said.
Barrymore added: “I was like, ‘What’s wrong with me that six months doesn’t seem like a very long time?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, so?’ “
Mathews then added: “Drew can go six months, no big deal.”
To which Barrymore responded: “Oh, years.”
Back in March on the Drew Barrymore Show, she told Mathews that she sometimes dreams about her exes.
Mathews, responded, asking if she’d “had a dream of an ex that made you go ‘Oooh?’ ”
The forty-seven-year-old actress responded, saying, “I think that’s the only place I’m getting action these days, Ross.
“Every six months I’ll have the hottest dream and I’ll be like, ‘Oh my God.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, I am libidinous and alive.'”
Despite Barrymore admitting she could go years without being intimate, it doesn’t mean she wants to.
And she has recently asked for some advice when it comes to her dating profile.
During Monday’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, she asked her guests Gayle King, Nate Burleson, and Tony Dokoupil for their opinion on her profile picture.
“I was excited to ask you guys because, you know, you’re both straight men and I don’t have a lot of those in my life,” Barrymore said.
“And it’s so nice to hear another woman’s perspective on this,” Barrymore told King. “Can I show you guys the picture I have on my dating app?”
After showing the photo to her audience, King said: “That’s not a bad picture.”
Dokoupil chimed in: “Look, I’m an unfrozen caveman when it comes to dating, I don’t understand modern dating, I’ve been married for a million years,” adding: “But if I saw that picture I would 100 percent [swipe] whatever the direction is.”
“I would swipe right!!” Burleson agreed. “I’m thunder swiping right.”
“Oh, yay!” Drew exclaimed, “That means so much to me!”
You can watch the moment here.
However, in her latest blog post titled Rebels Who Love, the star has spoken about her life over the past 6 years.
Barrymore revealed that she hasn’t been in an intimate relationship since she divorced art consultant Will Kopelman back in 2016.
“At nearly forty-eight I have very different feelings about intimacy than I did growing up,” she wrote.
“I lived a very rich full life. However, after 2 kids and a separation from their father that has made me cautious, I have had the pleasure of shifting my focus when it comes to love for myself and my 2 daughters.”
“I know that does not include a man nor has it for a while.”
She shared a quote from her therapist which summed up her thoughts: “S*x is not love! It is the expression of love.”
Barrymore continued: “I am just in a completely different place in my life and maybe in the near future I will get into a relationship… but it simply hasn’t been my priority.”
“A relationship with a man has not been top of mind for me for a very long time,” she added.
The forty-seven-year-old explained that she is “deeply committed” to her daughters and other young girls, rather than focusing on relationships with men.
“I have just simply come to laugh about the fact that it is not my personal priority to be with a partner, but that doesn’t mean it won’t become one someday,” she said.
“So for the record, I do not hate s*x!
“I have just finally come to the epiphany that love and s*x are simply not the same thing. I searched my whole life for, which is to be a calm woman and not a bombastic party girl,” Barrymore admitted.
In addition, Barrymore has said that she doesn’t want to undergo plastic surgery to fight the effects of natural aging.
During an interview on The Drew Barrymore Show, she touched upon the topic with actress Jamie Lee Curtis.
Curtis expressed her belief in natural beauty and said that there is a “genocide in natural beauty.”
She said: “Didn’t need to point fingers, but said there are people who are selling BS to unsuspecting women who are old enough to know better and teens who aren’t.
“We have lost touch as a society about what is beauty,” said Curtis, emphasizing how there is an enormous amount of pressure on women to change their appearance.
She explained that beauty has become something that can be “doctored and filtered and injected, and peeled and stripped away.”
“The truth is, you can’t,” Curtis added.
Barrymore strongly agreed with Curtis’s point, saying she had never done anything to her face to mess it up, to which Curtis responded: “I can tell!”
“I don’t want to fight nature. I’m raising two daughters, and we were raised in an industry where it was desired to drink off the fountain of youth, and I just never subscribed to it.
“So I appreciate everything you said. And I think men just need to let women know aging is safe and awesome,” Barrymore said.
Curtis admitted that she once attempted to get plastic surgery.
As a result, she said it didn’t work, and all it did was get her addicted to Vicodin.
“I’m 22 years sober now,” she said.
“The current trend of fillers and procedures, and this obsession with filtering, and the things that we do to adjust our appearance on Zoom are wiping out generations of beauty. Once you mess with your face, you can’t get it back.”
And now, Drew has offered E.T. fans an adorable insight.
“Now I believed E.T. was real,” she said at the 40th anniversary of the movie this week.
“I really loved him in such a profound way. Is it like true that … what would happen?” she then asked.
“Because I would go and take lunch to him.”
How cute!