Barrymore was born February 22, 1975 in Culver City, California, the daughter of American actor John Drew Barrymore and Ildiko Jaid Barrymore (née Makó), an aspiring actress born in a displaced persons camp in Brannenburg, West Germany to Hungarian World War II refugees. She is of Irish descent on her father's side through an ancestor actor Maurice Costello. Her parents divorced after she Read more...

Barrymore's career began when she auditioned for a dog food commercial at eleven months old. When she was bitten by her canine co-star, the producers were afraid she would cry, but she merely laughed, and was hired for the job. She made her film debut in Altered States (1980), in which she got a small part. A year later, she landed the role of Gertie, the younger sister of Elliott, in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Read more...

In the wake of this sudden stardom, Barrymore endured a notoriously troubled childhood. She was already a regular at the famed Studio 54 when she was a little girl, smoking cigarettes at age nine, drinking alcohol by the time she was eleven, smoking marijuana at twelve, and snorting cocaine at thirteen. She was in rehab at age thirteen and a second time at fourteen. Barrymore later described this Read more...