Wildflower

Drew Barrymore, the actress and producer who rose to fame as a child star in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), offers a collection of personal essays rather than a conventional chronological memoir. Written over one year while raising two young daughters, the book moves freely across decades, organized by theme and association rather than timeline. In a preface, Barrymore explains that she resisted calling the book a memoir because she wanted it to feel light, describing it instead as an elaboration on moments from her life.

The opening essay establishes Barrymore's roots in 1970s West Hollywood, where her mother, Ildiko Jaid, raised her as a single parent while working at the Comedy Store and the Troubadour, two well-known Los Angeles venues. They lived in a small duplex on Poinsettia Place, fronted by a wall of bougainvillea that enchanted the young Barrymore. After the success of E.T., her mother arrived with a new BMW, quit her jobs, and announced she would manage Barrymore's career full-time. Workers pruned the beloved plants, and the family moved to Sherman Oaks. At eight years old, Barrymore had effectively become the household breadwinner.

A central essay recounts how Barrymore, at age six, auditioned for director and producer Steven Spielberg and won a part in E.T. A precocious child who spun elaborate lies about imaginary siblings, she charmed Spielberg across multiple callbacks and, in her final audition, screamed so loudly she broke the recording equipment. The shoot became the most formative experience of her childhood: Spielberg used a physical E.T. puppet rather than digital effects and treated the children with playful respect. After filming, he accepted Barrymore's wish to serve as a godfather figure, providing the consistent, nurturing guidance her parents could not. The film became a global phenomenon.

Barrymore's father, John Drew Barrymore, the son of legendary actor John Barrymore, appears throughout as a volatile, mythical figure who never had a permanent address, phone, or shoes. He showed up sporadically during her childhood, sometimes crashing holiday dinners and causing scenes. When he developed cancer, Barrymore arranged hospice care. In a quiet moment, he looked at her feet, then into her eyes, and said, "You were made perfect" (28). She recognized this as his way of expressing love. After his death, his possessions amounted to soap bottles, lemon rinds, and threadbare bandanas. Barrymore scattered his ashes in Joshua Tree, a desert landscape east of Los Angeles.

At 14, Barrymore was legally emancipated with her mother's support. A judge warned her he could turn the clock forward but never back. She found a small apartment in West Hollywood and got a job at a coffeehouse. Her apartment was a disaster of unassembled furniture, moldy takeout, and heaping laundry. Her first trip to a Laundromat ended with bleach-spotted jeans and gummy towels. Her friend Justine taught her proper technique, and laundry became a weekly ritual she paired with reading classic novels. Realizing she had dropped out of school, she resolved to self-educate, reading Tolstoy, Austen, and Vonnegut and buying a dictionary to study every word.

Several essays chronicle Barrymore's wild late adolescence and early twenties. She drove a Ford Bronco fitted with an illegal megaphone around Los Angeles. On one New Year's Eve, she rammed a locked parking lot gate until it collapsed. She performed impromptu burlesque at a club and, on David Letterman's birthday show, spontaneously danced on his desk and briefly lifted her top. Watching the broadcast later, she decided this marked the end of an era. She instituted modesty clauses in her contracts and found creative direction in Ever After, a Cinderella retelling whose heroine rescues herself. "Rescue yourself" (82) became her guiding principle.

The book introduces the most important relationships in Barrymore's adult life. Nancy Juvonen, whom Barrymore met at 19 in Seattle, became a surrogate sister and her partner at Flower Films, a production company they cofounded in 1994. Nan provided the tough love Barrymore's parents never did, criticizing her lateness, insisting she vote, and modeling emotional accountability. Together they built Flower Films into a company that earned studios close to a billion dollars with films including Never Been Kissed, Charlie's Angels, and 50 First Dates. Barrymore also describes her two-decade collaboration with actor Adam Sandler, which produced The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates, and Blended.

Barrymore devotes an essay to her three dogs: Flossy, Templeton, and Vivian. She adopted Flossy and Templeton, two Lab-Chow mix puppies, at 19 from a flea market. A third dog, Vivian, was later adopted from the pound. Flossy, calm and dignified, taught Barrymore how to care for another being. When Flossy died in her sleep at nearly 17, Barrymore took her ashes to India, spreading them at Gandhi's house, a Himalayan monastery, and the Ganges River. She credits the dogs with preparing her emotionally for motherhood.

The India trip becomes its own essay, intertwined with a recurring childhood dream about a pearl-colored propeller plane in a golden desert. A guide named Shantum Seth took Barrymore through houses of worship representing multiple faiths and led her through Transcendental Meditation. When she departed from Rajasthan and saw an identical plane on the tarmac, she was paralyzed with fear. As the plane took off into a sunset, her terror shifted to optimism, and she reinterpreted the dream as a symbol of rebirth.

Barrymore's decade-long involvement with the World Food Program (WFP) in Kenya began in 2004 when she read a newspaper article about children lining up for school meals. She toured schools in Kibera, a densely populated Nairobi neighborhood, and bonded with a girl named Edith who had AIDS. Over multiple trips, she received a UN ambassadorship and built the Barrymore Learning Academy in Isiolo. She credits this work with preparing her to become a mother.

The book traces Barrymore's path to commitment with Will Kopelman, whom she first met in 2008 and reconnected with in 2011. Her friend Liza Chasin, a film producer, gave her pivotal advice: Choose the person in front of you rather than gambling on what is behind door number two, "a donkey and a broken washing machine" (220). Barrymore met Will's parents, Arie and Coco Kopelman, and was drawn to their warmth and four-decade marriage. Will proposed at his parents' 40th anniversary party in Idaho, and Barrymore discovered she was pregnant three weeks later. At the wedding, Arie gave her away and Coco walked Will down the aisle.

The birth of her second daughter, Frankie, triggered an emotional crisis when Barrymore realized the baby resembled her mother, Jaid. She confronted a deep fear that her troubled relationship with Jaid would repeat itself. Letters to both daughters punctuate the book, portraying Olive as independent and sharp and Frankie as joyful and clingy. Barrymore describes her experience with postpartum depression after Frankie's birth and her evolving identity as a working mother. She cites an episode of The Simpsons as her personal mantra: Homer tapes pictures of baby Maggie over a workplace plaque until it reads "DO IT FOR HER."

The book closes with Barrymore reflecting on age and identity at her 40th birthday dinner. Having progressed from a child denied childhood, to a reckless young adult trying to recapture it, to a woman and mother who finally feels settled, she embraces what she calls an "all-ages party" philosophy: inclusive, welcoming, and unconcerned with numbers. For the first time, she feels aligned with her age.