In the Vulture interview, released earlier on Monday, Barrymore — emancipated from her parents when she was just 14 years old — opened up about her strained relationship with her mother.
“All their moms are gone, and my mom’s not. And I’m like, Well, I don’t have that luxury. But I cannot wait. I don’t want to live in a state where I wish someone to be gone sooner than they’re meant to be so I can grow. I actually want her to be happy and thrive and be healthy. But I have to f—— grow in spite of her being on this planet,” she said.
Barrymore clarified that she never wished for her mother’s death despite their troubled relationship throughout her early years. “I have never said that I wished my mother was dead. How dare you put those words in my mouth,” the actress said in an Instagram video.
“To all you tabloids out there, you have been fucking with my life since I was 13 years old,” she said in the video. “I have never said that I wished my mother was dead. How dare you put those words in my mouth.”
“I have been vulnerable and tried to figure out a very difficult, painful relationship while admitting it is difficult to do while a parent is alive. And, for those of us who have to figure that out in real time cannot wait, as in they cannot wait for the time, not that the parent is dead,” she explained.
“Don’t twist my words around or ever say that I wish my mother was dead. I have never said that. I never would,” she added.
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Barrymore has been vocal about the complicated relationship she shared with her mother, who also served as her manager when she rose to fame as a child artist in the 1980s.
She shared an equally complicated relationship with her father, actor John Barrymore Jr, who the former claimed was absent from her life when she grew up.
Drew began drinking at 11 and by the age of 12, she had reportedly become addicted to cocaine, had gone to rehab, and had tried to end her life.
Barrymore has been candid about her relationship with her mother, whom she financially supports to this day. She told Norm MacDonald in 2018 that their relationship was more like a “best friend.”
“She was like, ‘Do you want to go to school and get bullied all day, or do you want to go to Studio 54?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, absolutely!'” Barrymore recalled.
“When I got emancipated by the courts at 14 years old, the umbilical cord was severed, and I have not been the same since,” she wrote in a Mother’s Day blog post. “It was necessary for me to step away and start to become my own person. And at the age of 14, my own parent.”
In the Vulture article, Barrymore opened up about her childhood and said the director ‘Steven Spielberg’ was “the only person in my life to this day that ever was a parental figure.”
“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,” Spielberg said. “Yet I felt very helpless because I wasn’t her dad. I could only kind of be a consigliere to her.”
Barrymore spent weekends with Spielberg, who took her to theme parks like Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, and even gifted her a cat that she named Gertie.
Spielberg also recalled not wanting to ruin the E.T. movie magic for Barrymore, who wondered why there were so many people around E.T.
“I didn’t want to burst the bubble,” Spielberg said. “So I simply said, ‘It’s okay, E.T. is so special E.T. has eight assistants. I am the director, I only have one.”
While shooting the sci-fi film, Barrymore asked Spielberg if he could be her father to which he said, “No.” However, Barrymore later would ask if he could be her godfather, to which he agreed.
Every Mother’s Day, Drew has paid tribute to Jaid Barrymore and included her in a heartfelt tribute. It is unknown where Jaid lives and how involved she now is in her daughter’s and granddaughters’ lives.
Credit: Deadline, Fox, Buzz Feed, Pop Sugar