Drew Barrymore is getting candid about her reason for taking a step back from acting.
The actress, 49, who now hosts her daytime talk show The Drew Barrymore Show, opened up about balancing Hollywood and parenthood in AARP The Magazine‘s February/March 2025 cover story.
“I was in my early 40s, and not learning how to be my own healthy, independent individual, how to be the parent I dream to be,” Barrymore explained. “Being other people doesn’t help me figure that out right now. And the long hours of doing films were hours I wouldn’t have with my kids. I wasn’t going to do that.”
The Santa Clarita Diet actress shares two daughters, Olive and Frankie, with her ex-husband, Will Kopelman. Elsewhere in her interview with AARP, Barrymore spoke about what she endured amid her divorce from Kopelman in 2016.
“My dream family was falling apart and I didn’t know how to put one foot in front of the other. And I had grown up so fast but now I didn’t know what age to feel — I just knew that my life was heavy, and painful and sad — and I sat in that for a while,” she said. “Eventually, thank goodness, I lifted myself out of it. I had two kids and I had to figure it out.”
Barrymore got a young start in Hollywood, starring in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. at age 6. She went on to star in dozens of projects, including Charlie’s Angels, Never Been Kissed and 50 First Dates, to name a few.
In 2023, she spoke to the Los Angeles Times about her potential return to the screen, confessing that acting did not feel “emotionally available to me right now.”
“I just need to be myself. I struggle to be someone else,” she said at the time. “But I just can’t see acting right now. I know that sounds sad and dismissive, and I hate when people are like, ‘I’m retiring,’ or ‘This is my goodbye.’ I don’t want it to come off that way.”
English (US) ·