Drew Barrymore is opening up about the harsh criticism she faced as a child star after finding fame in the iconic 1982 film E.T
During the episode of Wednesday, January 14 The Drew Barrymore Show, the 50-year-old actress spoke candidly about body shaming as a child while looking back at photos of herself from the past.
“This photo… It breaks my heart. I was 10 years old and everyone said to me, ‘Don’t look at how you’re leaving E.T. You are too heavy. You’re not blonde enough. You are not old enough. you are too young You’re not tall,’” he recalled.
Despite her young age, Barrymore said people are “just starting to get involved with her looks.”
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“It’s like, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be to 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… Now I know what’s important, and the look in my eyes is so clear.”
She added: “It’s nice to know that no matter how low, or the pressure we feel, or how we’re not proud of ourselves, or how we don’t like someone else, or we don’t fit into some mold that someone created for us… that real, authentic happiness is just this choice that we make.”
The 50 first dates The star was exposed to many adult-facing experiences during childhood, including beginning to use substances such as alcohol and cocaine at ages 9 and 12.
Drew Barrymore.
(Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)In February 2025, Barrymore open exclusively to Us Weekly about his childhood and troubled past.
“My mother had a very colorful cast of characters,” he recalled. “It wasn’t as secure as it should have been, but when I was younger, I 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 teenage childhood, but I never feel bad about it.”
Barrymore also shared that she experienced a noticeable lack of rules and boundaries at the time.
“The whole concept of ‘no’ made me really rebellious,” she added. “Like it didn’t apply to me. ‘No’ made me angry, but it turns out that ‘no’ is essential and has incredible benefits. It can make you feel so much more secure and cared for, even if you hate it at the time. It means that someone or something is holding you.”
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Barrymore he eventually went to rehab to seek support for his addiction struggles at age 14 and reflected on the experience during an October 2025 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show.
“I was also someone who was taken away and put in a place for two years,” Barrymore said of her experience as a teenager in drug rehab, adding that getting help was “the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Barrymore added that she has moved on from the past and that things are much better for her now.
“We stand up, hopefully, and find people who encourage us to tell the truth and finally have the opposite of shame, which is what comes with any kind of erratic behavior or having society tell you ‘this is not appropriate for this age’ or ‘what you’re doing is out of control,'” she said. “That’s a shame. And when you live with shame, it’s crippling.”