TRUE DREW: After a lifetime spent in the public eye, this movie starlet is coming into her own.

By: LAURA BROWN



Drew Barrymore is sitting on the floor at a friend's house in the Hollywood Hills, wearing gray sweats and long black-and-white-striped socks, and patting her dog, Douglas Fairbanks Barrymore (a rescue mutt with a Hollywood pedigree). She spent a long day yesterday swanning about in couture for these pages, inspired by '60s It girls Sharon Tate and Veruschka. The concept was Drew's idea, and there is no doubt that had she been of age in the '60s, she would have been swinging. "Ah," she says, smiling, "my favorite fashion era." It seems an injustice that Drew was never in an Austin Powers film, when you think about it. She'd put the femme in fembot.

Sucking down a giant iced tea, Drew is working up inspiration with a vintage '60s Playboy. (She collects them, and not for the articles.) This issue features a brunette nymphet sporting wide red knickers and a tan line for the record books. "Isn't that the sexiest thing?" she asks in that uncynical Drewish way that makes you instantly nod.

Even though she's in sweats, Drew looks pretty dreamy. She is lightly tanned from a solo trip to India, and her bone structure has popped. "I feel like some of my baby fat is going away," she observes, "and that's not just physically, it's psychologically. I think that your body is in tune with your mind and your spirituality and your heart. If things are going better, I just think you look better."

Things must be going swimmingly in Barrymoreland. But after being famous for 28 years, she's done more interviews than Ashton Kutcher has tweeted. "I know!" she says, a wicked glint in her eye. "Let's do the eHarmony questionnaire."

So we Google and find something eHarmony-ish. It's not Playboy, but in so many ways, it's the mirror of our times. Where else can you fall in love "for all the right reasons"? Drew smiles like Gertie seeing E.T. for the first time.

Describe yourself: warm, clever, dominant, ambitious, outgoing, agreeable, modest, submissive, lazy, introverted, aloof, quarrelsome, cold, gregarious, arrogant.

Drew Barrymore: "Not ambitious, arrogant, or cold. Lazy? No, I'm not lazy enough. Dominant—more so than people would think. I'm a total control freak and love to participate in the design of every single aspect of life."

This is true. On the Bazaar set, Drew was giving the creative director of Flower Films, Brent Kyle, specific font-size direction for a new tattoo to be inked on her wrist.

Impulsive, stable, energetic, spiritual, adventuresome, frugal, predictable, affectionate, organized, intelligent, compassionate, attractive, loyal, witty, neat.

DB: "All of the above, apart from frugal. I can be frivolous more than frugal."

Drew adds that the last frivolous thing she did was go antiquing. If that's frivolous (she bought a marble dog), she needs to try harder. Does her trip to India—two weeks on her own—qualify? No, it seems it was more necessary than indulgent. "I'm really good on my own," she says. "I was good in my early teens, and then I got really bad at being alone for like 10 years. And then for the last decade I've developed such a love of my independence that I have to go, Okay, you've had dinner by yourself three nights in a row, now you have to see your friends." Howard Hughes rising? "Oh, yes. I'll be peeing in jars momentarily."

She continues, "I just want balance. I think my life has been extremely inconsistent. It just makes me more passionate about it." It's intriguing what she says next: "I never have been insecure, because I see what a waste it is. I know there is a solution to insecurity. I don't tend to be thrown by problems that don't have solutions. And insecurity has a wealth of alternatives."


Drew has a pragmatic, almost Tony Robbins–like solution for our ills. "Oh, I would love to be a motivational speaker," she says. "I have pulled myself out of a million potholes, and I can see the potholes ahead of me. That doesn't mean that I could always do that so perfectly for my own life. I totally fall in potholes. Sometimes I fall so goddamn deep, I've got broken legs and I have to mend myself in the well and crawl back out." That would be especially tough if it was a hole full of pot. She chuckles and says, "Well, I like those holes."

I enjoy work for work's sake.

DB: "No, I enjoy work because I am a fanatic about it."

I enjoy mingling with people at social occasions.

DB: "Less and less."

I am satisfied with my level of emotional development.

DB: "At this current moment? Yes. I have not been proud in the past, and I assume I won't be proud in the future, but right now, goddamn it, yes."

I like to spend my spare time being physically active.

DB: "I actually really love to lie in bed, watch TV, be a total sloth, and eat my favorite food: Kraft macaroni and cheese. Last night I was watching The Next Food Network Star, eating mac and cheese, and feeling grand. And that was after I wore a sequined Givenchy gown with giant holes cut out of it."

Drew's "two or three hours of exercise" a week is paying off. "But," she cautions, "there is some lighting where I absolutely resemble Shamu. People have to know that you pick the best pictures where the lighting is beautiful and the angles are right and the body positions are gorgeous. And then, guess what, you turn, sit, hit the wrong light, and your belly flaps over and we all look human again."

Drew won't be giving Jillian Michaels a run for her money anytime soon, though. "I can apply myself at my job 20 hours a day, seven days a week. But I can't apply myself to my body more than a couple hours a week. I have no passion for fanaticism. The psychology when you just forgive yourself and enjoy what nature gave you is so liberating."

I have a high desire for sexual activity.

DB: "I think being sensual and sexy is good [chortles], and I will leave it at that."

Such discretion. Must have something to do with the fact that Drew is now 35. "For me, it's very magical," she says. "It's funny, because whenever they parody me on Saturday Night Live, they always say the word magical. But 35 is an incredible year for me. It's just a very auspicious time."


Drew won her first Golden Globe award earlier this year for her portrayal of Little Edie Beale in HBO's Grey Gardens, and the experience changed her irrevocably. It seems she left the baby fat on location—not to mention that she went totally Method, cutting off communication with friends and writing an occasional note by typewriter. "I'm marveling at all of it," she says. "I was thrilled. I didn't have any expectations, just a lot of demands on myself. It's nice when someone comes up and goes, ‘You're not crazy. It's all okay.' "

She's back to more familiar territory with Going the Distance (in theaters now), the story of a couple—Drew and on-off beau Justin Long—dealing with a geographically challenged relationship. Drew has tried long distance, characterizing herself as having a "lot of practice. I know a lot of dos and don'ts, but I don't have the answer right now."

Best to get the Justin question done then. "He's the cat's pajamas," she replies. "I couldn't love, respect, admire, and enjoy that individual more than I do. It would be physically impossible for me to have any more giggly joy at this person."

Choose the following words to describe your physical appearance: well groomed.

DB: "Sometimes amazing, sometimes not so amazing."

Fit.

DB: "No, no. I'm jiggly and totally normal."

Handsome.

DB: "Devastatingly. That's a joke."

Athletic.

DB: "As if I was on roller skates and had just gone through an oil slick."

Ordinary.

DB: "No, that's so self-deprecating to say that."

That said, eHarmony does encourage being sensible: I always read all of the warning literature on side effects before taking any medication.

DB: "I do now, because I had some weird side effects. So now I do read the labels. I can make jokes like that these days [laughs] because I totally have my shit together."

I sometimes drive faster than the posted speed limit.

DB: "I would say 99.999 percent of the time." Thankfully, Drew can drive, because she's a Luddite the rest of the time. "I didn't have a cell phone until way, way after everyone else did. I just didn't need it," she says. She's one of those people who can have an iPhone on hand but go days without checking it. "I hate texting," she says, "hate it." Twitter? "Never read it, never wrote it, don't want, it's not for me. Sometimes your mystery is harder to keep."

I don't care what other people think about me.

DB: "I care very much about what people think. I've had to since I was seven years old, when all of a sudden I started sharing my life with other people. On the other hand, I've had to give not a rat's ass about what people think or I wouldn't have had, been, or done half the things I did in my life. So, it's a very schizophrenic yes/no."

I generally want to come out ahead.

DB:"No. I think there's plenty enough to go around for everyone, and I'd love to be in a long line of people feeling like they've achieved something."

I frequently have to work to overcome my shyness.

DB: "[Laughs] I've never had that chromosome. Never."