Drew Barrymore Says She Won’t Allow Daughters To Become Child Stars Like Her, ‘People’ Reports

Stepping out for an event to honor director Martin Scorsese at the Museum of Modern Art’s 11th annual film benefit, Drew Barrymore caught up with People, and gushed about daughters Frankie, 4, and Olive, 6.

“Frankie’s really into Legos right now, which I’m really excited about because I mistakenly thought it was a boy’s toy and it turns out she’s really good at it. Her sister’s really good at Magna-Tiles. They’re both very good builders,’ Barrymore told People.

When asked about if Frankie and Olive would one day, perhaps, follow in their mother’s footsteps, the Santa Clarita Diet actress spoke out about how she wants a different life — one distinct from the star-studded childhood that she had — for her own kids.

“I’m not going to let them be kid actors. If they want to be actors [later] in life, I would be so supportive of it. Can you imagine me being [a] mom [who is] pushing her kids out there? That’s not going to happen,” she told People.

Barrymore, coming from a long line of actors in her family tree, first stepped in front of the camera at age five — playing Margaret Jessup in Ken Russel’s Altered States. But it was her role as the adorable Gertie in the 1982 Steven Spielberg classic E.T. that launched Barrymore into her own stardom.

A young life in Hollywood was not good to Barrymore. According an October 2015 interview with the Guardian, Barrymore was unable to find work as a young actress. This set her on a wild path of drug and alcohol abuse, attending her first, but not last, rehab facility at age 12. After a few marriages that ended in divorce — and a whirlwind youth spent living in the shadows of her past success — Barrymore seemed to settle down in the early ’90s.

“I don’t think I understood what was good, or pleasurable, or bad. I was probably chasing joy, but I don’t think it was the real joy. I was just too young to know,” Barrymore told the Guardian about her time spent as a child star.

In 1991, Barrymore published her fist memoir, Little Girl Lost, detailing her troubled past. Making a grand comeback, she went on to star in a plethora of movies in the ’90s, including Scream and The Wedding Singer. She started her own production company in 1995, and the first film under that umbrella was her very own Never Been Kissed.

Today, a 43-year-old Barrymore is a wildly successful actress, director, author, and doting mother to her two little girls.