I don’t have the privilege of having my mother dead, says Drew Barrymore in an interview

Actress and presenter Drew Barrymore spoke in a very frank tone about her relationship with her parents in an interview that has just been published in the American magazine New York Magazine.

“My neighbors’ mothers are gone, and mine is not. Well, I don’t have that privilege, but I can’t wait,” says the actress. “But I don’t want to live in a situation where I want someone to die before their time just so I can grow up. I want her to have a happy, healthy and prosperous life. I have to resolve my issues despite her being in this world.”

In the article in the American magazine, she tells how her mother —who also acted as her manager— treated her as a friend and client. When she had her first glass of champagne, Barrymore was eight; a year later, it was the turn of the first beer. And cocaine came at 12. All with the mother’s knowledge.

The artist was sent to a rehabilitation clinic at the age of 13, but her mother took her out after 12 days so that her daughter could participate in the film “Bem Fare de Casa” (1989).

Barrymore has spoken a few times about the difficulties he faced throughout his life with alcohol and drug abuse. She was emancipated at age 14 and was considered an adult in the eyes of the law.

It is also not the first time that the artist talks about the abusive behavior of her parents. She has already told, for example, how her mother forbade her to eat sweets, but authorized the use of drugs.

Barrymore got his start in the entertainment industry as a child — when he starred in Steven Spielberg’s “ET”, for example, he was just seven years old. She was so small that she thought the alien in the movie, a doll, was real.

The father was no different from the mother. John Drew Barrymore, who was relatively successful as an actor, was also an alcoholic and left the family as soon as his daughter was born. The first memory Drew has of his father is when he threw her against the wall when she was three. She also remembers that John committed aggressions like putting his daughter’s hand in the flame of a candle and saying that the pain was something of the imagination.

To New York Magazine, she says that she started to see her father in a different way with age: “I understood how inept as a human being he was”.

In the same report, she says she wrote to her mother to wish her a happy birthday and heard an “I love you” back. “No matter how old you get, when your mom says she loves you, you go back to being small,” she says.

“I forgive my mother, I forgive or my father. I never forgave myself, but I want to forgive myself and I’m ready for it.”

The actress has been successful with The Drew Barrymore Show, a talk show that has been renewed for a fourth season. She has been praised for her candid interviews, in which she often opens up about personal issues — leaving interviewees free to talk about intimate topics as well.