Drew Barrymore caused quite the stir after admitting that she wished her own mother was ‘gone’ – in what is just the latest insight into her fraught relationship with her parents.
The actress, 51, recently told New York Magazine that she ‘couldn’t wait’ for mom Jaid to ‘be gone’ as she admitted that she feels envious of her friends who have lost their parents.
‘All their moms are gone, and my mom’s not. I don’t have that luxury. But I cannot wait,’ she told the outlet.
But she later attempted to clarify her quotes in a video posted on Instagram, in which she insisted that she meant she ‘cannot wait’ for the time when she was able to ‘figure out a very difficult, painful relationship.’
The star has long maintained how her mother ‘exploited her’ from an early age and has often shared sh*ocking detail about her tumultuous upbringing.
It included dabbling in drink and dr*ugs from an early age before being sent away for stints in rehab as well as a psychiatric institution when she was just a teenager.
She officially became emancipated from her parents at 14 years old before moving into her own West Hollywood apartment to seek a fresh start.
Drew has been keen to stress that she does not ‘blame’ her mother for the bad experiences she has endured – and added that she still ‘cares’ about her despite their rocky past.
Here, FEMAIL has laid bare the ins and outs of Drew’s traumatic childhood.
Drew has previously revealed that her father, late actor John Drew Barrymore, was a ‘violent al*coholic’ and left the picture when she was young.
She took to Instagram to pen how she had no significant relationship with him, but said that she had not been left with any ‘daddy issues.’
The star began: ‘My mom chose a wild card for my dad. He was a mad poet hedonist man child! 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!’
Following her father’s departure from their lives, Drew’s mother, who was an aspiring actress herself, ‘wasn’t prepared’ to raise a daughter single-handedly.
The star previously told The Mail On Sunday: ‘I didn’t have parents, I was the parent to them. It was all totally upside-down.’
Drew became an on-screen star at age seven thanks to Steven Spielberg’s ET but she believes her mother also ‘exploited her.’
And Jaid would regularly take the youngster out to Hollywood parties and nightclubs, which is when her troubles only got worse.
She began dabbling with drink and dru*gs before she was even a teenager and eventually entered rehab
Drew, who is now a mother-of-two herself, has previously detailed her early encounters with al*cohol and dru*gs.
She told People magazine how she had her first drink at nine, smoked pot at 10 and started using cocaine at 12 – at which point she was briefly blacklisted from Hollywood after getting a reputation for being a ‘party girl.’
By the time she was 13 years old, she had already gone d*rug rehabilitation treatment twice.
Drew started drinking heavily again when her marriage to Will Kopelman fell apart in 2016.
She previously told: ‘It was just trying to numb the pain and feel good—and al*cohol totally did that for me.
‘The drinking thing for me was a constant, like, “You cannot change. You are weak and incapable of doing what’s best for you. You keep thinking you will master this thing, and it’s getting the better of you.”‘
But she has since successfully overcome her demons and, in 2022, she discussed her sobriety in an essay published in Take Care of Yourself – December’s edition of her monthly magazine titled, Drew.
The award winning actress wrote about her detachment from a*lcohol, as she called it ‘one of the most liberating things in my journey of life.’
Drew encouraged readers to put themselves first as she stated: ‘One of the bravest things you can do is slay those dragons and finally change an awful cycle in which you’ve found yourself stuck. For me, it was to stop drinking.’
She further admitted that giving up alc*ohol allowed her ‘to finally become free of the torture of guilt and dysfunction.’
Drew felt at her ‘lowest’ age 13 before being sent to a psychiatric institution for 18 months
Drew’s mother sent her to a psychiatric institution for 18 months when she was just 13 years old.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2015, Drew recalled feeling ‘terrible’ and ‘alone’ as a child, adding that she was ‘very angry’ about her ‘parents not being there’ for her.
‘When I was 13, that was probably the lowest,’ she said. ‘Just knowing that I really was alone, it felt terrible.
‘It was a really rebellious time. I was very, very angry. If you search deep down in me, it’s like, why am I so angry, man? And it’s like, OK, because my parents weren’t there.
‘But I realized, honestly, yeah, my mom locked me up in an institution – boohoo! It did give an amazing discipline.
‘It was like serious recruitment training and boot camp, and it was horrible and dark and very long-lived, a year and a half, but I needed it.
‘I needed that whole insane discipline. My life was not normal. I was not a kid in school with normal circumstances. There was something very abnormal, and I needed some severe shift.
‘It was a very important thing to experience for me. It was very humbling, very quieting.
‘Maybe it was necessary, because I came out of there a more respecting person. And my parents didn’t teach me that, and life wasn’t teaching me that.’
She was emancipated from her parents aged 14 and moved out into her own place for a fresh start
Following her stint in the psychiatric hospital, Drew was legally emancipated from her parents age 14.
She moved out to live on her own in an apartment in West Hollywood and went about starting over in her career.
The 50 First Dates star is now able to reflect on her traumatic childhood in a more positive light.
She told Norm Macdonald on his Netflix special, Norm Macdonald Has a Show, in 2018: ‘It really is a recipe for disaster.
‘But you know what’s exciting? I got my s*** over with at, like, 14.
‘Like, midlife crisis, institutionalized, blacklisted, no family, like, got it done, and then got into the cycle of being my own parent, figuring it out.’
Now, Drew says that she is focusing on working through her past trauma, but admits that doing so while her mother is still ‘on this planet’ has been a complicated process.
In an Instagram video posted to her account on Monday evening in the wake of her New York Magazine interview, the TV host attempted to shed further light on what that journey has looked like for her, while insisting that she would never ‘wish that her mother was dead.’
‘I have been vulnerable and tried to figure out a very difficult, painful relationship, while admitting it is difficult to do while a parent is alive,’ she said.
‘For those of us who have to figure that out in real time cannot wait, as in they cannot wait for the time, not that [they wish] the parent is dead.’
