Trigger Warning: This article contains themes of child abuse that some readers may find distressing.
Steven Spielberg has been a mentor and parental figure in Drew Barrymore’s life since the age of seven but during the filming of the colossal hit “E.T.,” Spielberg recalls being “helpless” towards Barrymore’s fragile childhood.
“She was staying up way past her bedtime, going to places she should have only been hearing about, and living a life at a very tender age that I think robbed her of her childhood. Yet I felt very helpless because I wasn’t her dad. I could only kind of be a consigliere to her,” he exclusively told Vulture in an interview.
While Spielberg was honing Barrymore’s acting prowess, she was trying to find a father figure in him due to the deteriorating relationship with her real father, actor John Drew Barrymore, who was an abusive alcoholic. For young Drew, home and school became miserable but work turned fortifying. It became her constant in troubled times. Acting became the thing she was good at and soon learned to self-generate.
Barrymore hailed Spielberg as “the only person in [her] life to this day that ever was a parental figure.” He eventually turned to become her godfather. She had once asked Spielberg if he could become her dad. He had said ‘no,’ so instead she asked if he could be her godfather, to which he agreed. During the time of filming “E.T.,” Barrymore stayed with him on weekends. He also presented her with a cat, which she named Gertie. The ace Hollywood director also took her to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm.
Talking about her late father, John Barrymore, Drew recalls that he was “eccentric” and once he had flung her against the wall. John Drew Barrymore had attained moderate success and was almost out of work when she was born. He turned towards alcohol and abandoned Drew’s mother, Ildiko Jaid Barrymore. Her first memory of him is from when she was 3 years old, the time he stormed into the room and tossed her into a wall. Drew recalled that he was psychotic and would “hold her hand over a candle and say that pain is in the imagination.” She also said that he would “only come to see the family when he needed money.” Sharing further, she said, “He became an itinerant eccentric, houseless and shoeless, using lemons and olive oil to bathe. Talk about someone who was not a careerist. He was like, ‘I will burn this f–king dynasty to the ground.'”
Drew has been vocal about her childhood struggles earlier and mentioned that she got addicted to marijuana at the age of 10 and started snorting cocaine at 12. She had to also check into rehab at that age. She had mentioned that her addictions allowed her to “soar above my depression and sadness.” Barrymore picked up only good influence from the maverick legendary director, Spielberg, during her spiraling childhood years, and they still remain close to this day.
CHILD ABUSE: If you know of any children who are being subjected to abuse, please contact The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at (800) 422-4453