Drew Barrymore’s favourite co-star: “True admiration of another person”
Long before Drew Barrymore became someone who essentially does nothing other than sit on a sofa and say “oh my god, I love you” to other celebrities while crying occasionally, she had a successful film career.
It was a career that started memorably, way back in 1982, when in Steven Spielberg’s ET the Extra-Terrestrial she made a fine job of running around in dungarees and screaming at a puppet alien.
In fairness to her, she definitely helped make that film the global blockbuster it became, and she made the most of her newfound fame as a child star, picking up roles in the likes of Stephen King’s creepy Firestarter and hosting Saturday Night Live at just seven years old.
Things went a bit off the rails for her after that, though, with a troubled youth and some poor film decisions culminating in a lengthy period in rehab for Barrymore, who didn’t really bounce back until a role in 1992’s TV thriller Poison Ivy, which didn’t fare well with critics.
After a few more years of making fairly poor choices and the occasional erratic appearance on talk shows, she requested a small role in the 1996 slasher movie Scream, but the producers were excited she was interested and so gave her more screen time. The film ended up being a huge success, and Barrymore was rightly lauded for her performance, and she was still only 21.
A couple of years later, she paired up with Adam Sandler for the first time in The Wedding Singer, a comedy that proved another massive success and provided another step toward Barrymore being seen as a bankable leading lady. That continued with big hits from Never Been Kissed in 1999 and then the first Charlie’s Angels movie, which brought in a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office.
Barrymore then had another big hit with her second film alongside Adam Sandler, 50 First Dates, a comedy about a woman with amnesia who has to be won over on a daily basis by Sandler’s character. It almost tripled its budget on release and established Sandler as Barrymore’s co-star of choice; she would go on to star with him again in 2014’s Blended and named him as someone she liked doing onscreen kisses with more than any other actor.
She told talk show host Andy Cohen: “I mean, I love that Adam Sandler and I are so platonic, we’ve never dated, his wife Jackie is my dear friend, but I love being in films with him because I think we’re representing something bigger than, like, hot sexual chemistry. We’re representing, like, true admiration of another person.”
Since around 2020 or so, Barrymore has focused on producing and running her daytime talk show, although she very nearly got cancelled for that when she decided to go against the 2023 Sag-Aftra Writers’ Strike and continued filming without the head writers. It led to her having to apologise on Instagram, which she later deleted, and then postponing the show for some time, although it is now back and renewed for a sixth season.
