Drew Barrymore remembers getting fat-shamed as a little girl after ‘E.T’

Being a child star has proven to be difficult, with many stories of hardships. With eyes on you comes judgment, with people often forgetting that you’re still a child. Many face battles with addiction or public scrutiny as they grow up in the spotlight. Drew Barrymore is one of the success stories, but her journey was not easy either. 

Drew was the daughter of actors John Drew Barrymore Jr. and Ildiko Jaid Barrymore. The world fell in love with her in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) when she was just 7 years old playing “Gertie.” The film went on to become the highest-grossing film in the 1980s and made her one of the most famous child actors of all time.

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On Wednesday’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, she revealed that when she was 10, people began making comments about her weight. She shared a picture of herself when she was 10, saying, “It just breaks my heart. I was 10 years old, and I was just told by everybody, ‘You don’t look how you did in E.T. You’re too heavy.”

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“You’re not blonde enough. You’re not old enough. You’re too young. You’re not tall.’ And everybody just started getting involved in the way I looked,” she continued. Barrymore said she was confused trying to figure out what she was supposed to be for her other people. “And you don’t know yourself at 10,” she said. 

Drew’s tough childhood

Barrymore’s childhood was intense. After her parents’ divorce, Drew’s mother began taking her to nightclubs when she was just 9. The young girl became a regular at Studio 54, where she was introduced to smoking, drinking, and doing drugs.

The lifestyle led to a pre-teen love of drugs and alcohol, and by 11, she had a drinking problem, and by 12, she was a drug addict. Drew went to rehab at the age of 13, attempted suicide, and after a successful juvenile court petition for emancipation, she moved into her own apartment when she was 15.

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Now at 50, the 50 First Dates star said she’s “relieved” that she now knows what’s important.  “It’s a battle and a beautiful, internal war that we fight on the front lines, day in and day out, to get to a place where we can actually say this sentence and believe it, which is: ‘I deserve happiness.’ That, if it takes you a long time to figure out, it’s okay.”

She also shared a message for anyone that feels pressured, “Somehow, some way, on the other side of that is like… kind of adulthood, and a personal freedom, and a desire to stop pleasing everybody else and start realizing what it’s gonna take for you to feel good about yourself, no matter what you look like or feel like.”