Drew Barrymore is opening up about the harsh criticisms that she faced as a child star after finding fame in the iconic 1982 film E.T.
During the Wednesday, January 14 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, the actress, 50, spoke candidly about being body shamed as a child as she looked back at photos of herself from the past.
“This picture…It just breaks my heart. I was 10 years old and I just was told by everybody, ‘You don’t look how you did in E.T. You’re too heavy. You’re not blonde enough. You’re not old enough. You’re too young. You’re not tall,’” she recalled.
Despite her young age, Barrymore said that people “just started getting involved in the way [she] looked.”
“It’s like, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be for other people,” Barrymore continued. “And you don’t know yourself at 10. What I’m so relieved about now is that it’s four decades later, I’m 50…I do know what’s important now, and the look in my eyes is so clear.”
She added, “It’s nice to know that no matter how low it gets, or how much pressure we feel, or how unproud of ourselves, or how we are not pleasing to someone else, or we’re not fitting into some mold someone created for us…that real, true happiness is just this choice we make.”
The 50 First Dates star was exposed to a lot of confronting adult experiences during childhood, including beginning to use substances like alcohol and cocaine at ages 9 and 12.
Drew Barrymore. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
In February 2025, Barrymore opened up exclusively to Us Weekly about her childhood and troubled past.
“My mom had a very colorful cast of characters coming through,” she recalled. “It wasn’t as safe as it should have been — but when I was younger, it was more whimsical. Not feeling like I had a childhood has nothing to do with feeling robbed of [one]. It just wasn’t your garden-variety youthful childhood, but I never feel upset about that.”
Barrymore also shared that she experienced a notable lack of rules and boundaries at the time.
“The whole concept of ‘no’ made me really rebellious,” she added. “As if it didn’t apply to me. ‘No’ made me angry, but it turns out ‘no’ is essential and has incredible benefits. It can make you feel a lot more safe and cared for, even if you hate it at the time. It means someone or something is holding you.”
Barrymore ultimately went to rehab to seek support for her addiction struggles at age 14 and reflected on the experience during an October 2025 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show.
“I also was someone who got taken away and put in a place for two years,” Barrymore said about her experience as a teen in a drug rehab facility, adding that getting help was “the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Barrymore added that she has moved on from the past and things are much better for her now.
“We pull ourselves up, hopefully, and we find people that encourage us to tell the truth and to finally have the opposite of shame, which is what comes with any type of erratic behavior or society telling you ‘that’s not appropriate at this age’ or ‘what you’re doing is out of control,” she said. ”That is shame. And when you live with shame, it is crippling.”
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