By all rights, Drew Blythe Barrymore should probably be dead right now. But she's not. And therein lies the fascination for me.

Drew's backstory is so extreme as to be almost unbelievable. It certainly would be considered a crappy script if someone tried to pass it off as fiction. She is the direct blood relative of no fewer than three legendary screen actors/actresses – silent film stars John Drew (her great-grandfather) and Dolores Costello (her grandmother), and – of course – one of the true legends of American cinema, John Barrymore (her grandfather, born John Blythe). So much for the good parts.

(A brief historical note – Dolores Costello was possibly the most tragic victim of the switch from silent films to “talkies”. A very popular star in the silent era, Costello found herself completely without work after the transition. Why? Because Dolores Costello, star of the silent screen... lisped.)

Her father, John Drew Barrymore (John's eldest son by Dolores Costello, whom he soon divorced), was in his 40s at the time of her birth, which came about due to a brief marriage to the 30ish Jaid Mako, the daughter of Hungarian war refugees. John Drew hadn't followed in his father's footsteps, though not for lack of trying. Instead, he had become an alcoholic drifter who would disappear for months at a time and who often found himself homeless and destitute – imagine Earnest Hemingway without the fishing and the literature, and you get the picture. He was long gone by the time his daughter was born. Jaid, left to raise Drew on her own, wasted no time in taking advantage of her husband and daughter's famous name, getting little Drew into a Puppy Chow commercial at the tender age of 11 months. John Drew, in fact, did not even meet his daughter until she was three, at which time he threw her against a wall in a drunken rage. That, sadly, was Drew's first memory of her father.

Drew worked sporadically in child roles until two significant roles came her way. First, at the age of 4 or so, she was cast as the young daughter of William Hurt and Blair Brown in Ken Russell's psychodrama “Altered States” (1980). Her job was mainly to look adorable, which most 4-year-olds can accomplish with little difficulty. But her next role – with an equally important director – was a bit more memorable.

“E.T. The Extra-terrestrial” turned out to be one of the most successful films of all time – the film that pushed Steven Spielberg from “hit director” to “top five in Hollywood” status. The film centered on the fine performance by ten-year-old Henry “Elliott” Thomas (and, of course, an ugly puppet), but all the media attention focused on the scene-stealing six-year-old with the famous name who played his younger sister Gertie. By the end of that summer, Drew – now all of seven – had been on every major talk show and was hosting “Saturday Night Live”. Heady stuff for a first grader.

“E.T.” was, and likely always will be, the biggest and best film Barrymore ever made. And she was SIX. Virtually every young celebrity who achieves a career-defining moment that young self-destructs in some way. The litany is sad – Mason Reese, Danny Bonaduce, Brandon Cruz (from “The Courtship of Eddie's Father”), everyone from “Diff'rent Strokes”, and so on. VIRTUALLY all. There are some that escape that fate – Ron Howard springs to mind immediately, as does Melissa Gilbert. But both Howard and Gilbert had strong families to ground them in reality.

Drew didn't.

Barrymore followed “E.T.” with a pair of semi-starring turns, first in the film version of Stephen King's 479,876^th novel “Firestarter”, then in the Charles Shyer (“Private Benjamin”, “Father of the Bride”) romantic comedy “Irreconcilable Differences”, where Drew played a daughter suing her parents (Ryan O'Neill and Shelley Long) for divorce. Trite? Yes. But the film worked – and it worked mainly because of Drew. Even at 8 years old, Barrymore had the knack of talking and acting mature beyond her years – a director's dream.

And that's when things started to go wrong. Drew wasn't just talking and acting mature beyond her years on-screen – she was doing it in real life, too. Smoking at 9. Driving at 10. Doing coke and drinking heavily at 12. Rehab at 13, and an autobiography frankly talking about it all at 14. Once again, Drew was way ahead of the curve. (Liza Minelli didn't get to this point until her 40s......) But somehow she managed to escape with her wits, and health, intact.

Whereupon she promptly hit puberty. In a big way. By the age of 14, Barrymore looked (and still acted) about 25. This led, logically, to a new phase in her career – the Lolita Years. Beginning with 1989's “Far From Home”, the first film to show off Drew's newly-developed...um... features, and running essentially until her cameo in 1993's “Wayne's World 2”, which ALSO showed off her.... um... features (which had since been reduced in size, much to the chagrin of a generation of male fans), virtually every character Drew played was some sort of sexually-charged bad girl. The epitome of this era is the legendary B movie “Poison Ivy” (1992), the classic tale of “good-looking girl befriends outcast nerdy girl, moves in with her family, and winds up killing the mother and sleeping with the father”. (I believe the story was originally penned by Robert Louis Stevenson as a part of “A Child's Garden of Verses”. I could be wrong.) “Poison Ivy” successfully tapped into the zeitgeist of a large segment of Drew's fanbase; namely, the segment of her fanbase that wanted to have statutorily-illegal sex with her on the hood of a car in the rain. Not coincidentally, it has found greater staying power on late-night cable TV than it did in the theaters. Other highlights include “Guncrazy”, a boring made-for-cable “Bonnie and Clyde” ripoff that featured Drew in a wet T-shirt sans undergarments, and “The Amy Fisher Story” (1993), which is.... well, it's “Poison Ivy” come to life. (Sadly, Drew's Amy Fisher Story is generally regarded as the lesser of the two competing Amy Fisher Stories; the other one starred Alyssa Milano, who's a bit closer in background to the subject matter. And who, incidentally, starred in “Poison Ivy 2”. Everything connects!)

But all good things must come to an end, and so did the Lolita Era. Mostly, I believe, for practical reasons – as she matured, Drew went from looking “sexy” to more “cute”, and therefore became less believable in the Lolita roles. From 1994 on, Barrymore became more of a “serious” actress – i.e. one who takes on more varied and challenging roles in order to advance their craft (vs., say, just collecting a paycheck for pouting and wearing short skirts). It took a while, though. Her first major non-Lolita role was in 1994's “chick western” “Bad Girls”, where she played.... um.... well..... she played a prostitute. (Small moves... small moves....) “Bad Girls” is interesting as a historical footnote, since it starred two of the best (Barrymore and Mary Stuart Masterson) and one of the worst (Andie MacDowell) actresses then working. But as a movie it wasn't very good, and tanked at the box office. Apparently desiring to switch to the other fried green tomato, Barrymore next teamed with Mary-Louise Parker and Whoopi Goldberg in the far more successful “Boys on the Side”. A distaff “road” picture (much like the earlier “Thelma and Louise”), “Boys” was a critical and commercial success, earning complimentary reviews for Drew's performance as a free-spirited pregnant girl on the run from an abusive boyfriend. Barrymore followed this with a turn in Woody Allen's ill-fated musical “Everyone Says I Love You”, where she showed she could sing. Sort of. A little bit. Well, actually, she didn't sing – her voice was dubbed. But hey, she tried.

1996 brought Barrymore's first significant post-E.T. Box-office success – the Wes Craven / Kevin Williamson reinvention/spoof of the horror genre “Scream”. Although Drew was not the star of the film, per se (although Craven offered her the lead, she turned it down), she WAS the biggest name attached to the project – which made the fact that she's killed off almost as soon as the audience is seated all the more surprising. “Scream” was enormously successful, and showed that Drew's name alone could draw a decent number of viewers. Hollywood took notice.

It took 2 years for the dam to break, but when it did, it did in a big way. Pairing Drew with Adam Sandler in the lightweight but charming comedy “The Wedding Singer” resulted in what has proven to be THE defining movie for both actors to this point. Sandler, who until that point had mainly played angry, sarcastic misanthropes (e.g. “Happy Gilmore” and “Billy Madison”), was suddenly recast as the angry, sarcastic, yet sadly charming loser Robbie Hart, who unenthusiastically belts out 80s pop tunes at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and such. Barrymore is the unbelievably sweet and nice Julia, who hires him to play at her wedding. Unfortunately, the guy she's marrying is a complete dick, and Julia's too sweet and nice to see that. You can predict the rest – but simplistic and cliched as it was, it was well-executed and entertaining.

“Wedding Singer” made a TON of money relative to its fairly trivial cost of production – and ever since, Drew has been offered (and has taken) multiple “sweet girl” roles – see, e.g., “Home Fries”, “Never Been Kissed”, “Riding in Cars With Boys”, etc. She even played a sweet and kind dog (or at least voiced one) in “Olive the Other Reindeer” for television. All money in the bank for the producers/financiers behind the projects. Few working actresses have cornered this market in the way Drew has.

On the other hand, Barrymore has continued to do “other” things besides the sweet stuff. For example, you may have heard of a film called “Charlie's Angels”. Anxiously anticipated as a catastrophe waiting to happen, the film turned out surprisingly well – a well-paced action film that displayed a rich sense of humor about its subject matter. Plus – hot chicks in jumpsuits. (The catastrophe came in its SEQUEL, the atrocious “Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle”.) She also voiced one of the main characters in the Don Bluth animated feature “Titan A.E.”. More recently, Barrymore played a small but vital role in George Clooney's directorial debut, “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”.

Off-screen, it's been apparent for some time that Drew's free-spirited fun-at-all-costs attitude survived rehab, even if the drinking and drug abuse didn't. Whether it's the impromptu strip show at a burlesque club for her 21st birthday, flashing David Letterman on live TV, the pair of short-duration marriages, the “Playboy” spread, her open bisexuality, or the six tattoos, it's clear that Barrymore knows how to party. Yet it appears that few, if any, ever speak ill of her – by all accounts, she's as sweet and friendly in real life as she is on-screen (albeit quite the little handful).

But none of this specifically answers the key question here – why do I like her, to the point that I'm willing to devote an entire page to her and write nearly 2800 words about it? I don't even know the woman, for pete's sake. “Dave,” you say, “What gives? We understand the STEVE MCQUEEN page – after all, he's the coolest man who ever lived (except for the Ali MacGraw thing) – but Drew Barrymore? Shouldn't you just go rent a porno, get your ya-yas out, and get back to writing about Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett and other really good (and beautiful) actresses?” Well, all good suggestions, Hypothetical Person, but... trust me. Drew's worth the attention. Like I said above, she fascinates me.

First and foremost, Drew isn't all that much younger that I am. Hence, she's roughly a contemporary. And I, like everyone else, pretty much watched her grow up. There's something in that. Whether it's actors, or bands, or athletes, you always seem to have a special affinity for those you remember from “back when”. I can remember seeing “Irreconcilable Differences” when it originally came out (I was 13 or 14 at the time) and actually being impressed at how GOOD this little 9-year-old girl was in that role. (I was also impressed by seeing Sharon Stone in the buff, but that's a different story.) After that, I paid attention.

Second, Drew actually IS quite a good actress. There are, in my opinion, two varieties of actors. There are “physical” actors, who use their bodies as extensions of their voices and performances. Many of the “Method” actors trained by Lee Strasberg fall into this category. Some good examples are Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, and Sir Laurence Olivier. I'd say that a large majority of quality actors fall into this category. But then, there are actors who can convey emotion and feeling just through facial expressions. I call them – oddly enough -- “facial” actors. These actors are rarer – it appears to me that physical acting can be taught, while facial acting tends to be an inborn instinct. The textbook example of this kind of acting is seen in “Almost Famous”, when William (Patrick Fugit) tells Penny (Kate Hudson) that the man she loves just sold her to Humble Pie for a case of beer. Hudson says NOTHING – but we see the full range of emotions she goes through in that moment, from disbelief to pain to attempting to make the best of it. All through her eyes and face. It's absolutely brilliant, and one of the single best pieces of acting I've ever seen. To make a long story short, Drew is a facial actress. One of the characteristics of her films is that no matter how badly drawn the character is, she generally finds a way to “fill in” whatever blanks the writer failed to fill via subtle facial cues. A quick shy smile, or a bitten lower lip, in the middle of a speech can do wonders for character development. Drew appears to come by this naturally, since it's a characteristic of hers dating back to the E.T. Days – and I really don't think she was working the mirror for hours at six. Of course the REALLY great actors combine both types into one performance. But those actors are few and far between. McQueen could pull that off; possibly the best I've seen at that is the sadly departed John Cazale, best known as Fredo from the “Godfather” films. (Cazale, it should be noted, appeared in only 5 pictures total. But every single one was nominated for a “Best Picture” Oscar(tm). He died of bone cancer in 1978.) But Drew's still young – you never know.

Third – it's really astonishing that a girl pushed into celebrity so young, and with such – shall we say – intensity, has, through sheer force of will, wound up pretty well-adjusted. Consider, for a moment, this: Drew's childhood was not really all that different from Michael Jackson's. Now Michael is clearly at one end of the spectrum in these matters – no one is nearly as poorly adjusted as Michael is – but it shows you how these stories typically turn out. Drew is quirky, no doubt – but quirky in a “still acts like a college coed at 28” sense, not in the “bathes daily in a lukewarm stew of horse placentas and olive oil” sense. Someone who managed to pull herself out of the death spiral she was in – and make no mistake, she was by her own admission in a very bad way when she was 13 or so – and to do it at such a young age is someone I want to know more about.

Fourth – call me jaded for having lived in LA for so long, but I'm terribly unimpressed by celebrity these days. I can take them or leave them; they're just people to me. Ergo, there are very few celebrities that I'd care to meet, because I feel most of them would have nothing to offer to me BUT their celebrity. But there are a few, and Drew is one of those. And I'm not considering looks here – as mentioned, by all accounts she's a funny, sweet gal. And damned if we don't KNOW for a fact that she'd be fun to hang out with. I mean, come on.....

Finally – she's cute as hell, and I'm single. You do the math, Einstein.