Barrymore’s films compiled a worldwide box office gross that stood at over US$2.3 billion. According to The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Star Salary Top 10, she was tied for eighth place on the top ten list of actresses’ salaries, commanding 10 to 12 million dollars per film for 2006. Barrymore became the youngest person to have hosted Saturday Night Live having hosted on November 20, 1982, at 7 years of age, a record that still remains unbroken as of 2020. On February 3, 2007, Barrymore hosted SNL for the fifth time, making her the second female host (after Candice Bergen) in the show’s history to do so. She hosted again on October 10, 2009, becoming the first female to host six times.

Drew Blythe Barrymore was born in Culver City, California, to American actor John Drew Barrymore and aspiring actress Jaid Barrymore (born Ildikó Jaid Makó), who was born in a displaced persons camp in Brannenburg, West Germany, to Hungarian World War II refugees. Barrymore is one of four children and has a half-brother, John, who is also an actor. Her parents divorced in 1984, when she was nine years old.

In the 1984 horror film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1980 novel Firestarter, Barrymore played a girl with pyrokinesis who becomes the target of a secret government agency known as The Shop. The same year, she played a young girl divorcing her famous parents in Irreconcilable Differences, for which she was nominated for her first Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. In a review in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert stated, “Barrymore is the right actress for this role precisely because she approaches it with such grave calm.”

Barrymore endured a troubled youth and continued to act intermittently during the decade. She starred in the 1985 anthology horror film Cat’s Eye, also written by King. The film received positive reviews and Barrymore was nominated for a Young Artist Award for Best Leading Young Actress. She starred alongside Jeff Bridges and Alice Krige in the 1989 romantic comedy See You in the Morning. Vincent Canby of The New York Times criticized the “fashionable phoniness” of the film, but positively singled out Barrymore for her performance. After her twelve-day rehab treatment at ASAP, Barrymore starred in Far from Home (1989) as a teenager who gets stranded with her father in the small town in a remote part of the desert. The film went largely unnoticed by audiences and received negative reviews from critics, who dismissed the sexual portrayal of her role.

Barrymore’s first name, Drew, was the maiden name of her paternal great-grandmother Georgie Drew, and her middle name, Blythe, was the surname of the family first used by her great-grandfather Maurice Barrymore. In her 1991 autobiography Little Girl Lost, Barrymore recounted early memories of her abusive father, who left the family when Barrymore was six months old. She and her father never had anything resembling a significant relationship and seldom spoke to each other.

When she was 16 in 1991, Barrymore became engaged to Leland Hayward, namesake and grandson of Hollywood producer Leland Hayward. The engagement was called off a few months later. Barrymore was engaged to and lived with musician and actor Jamie Walters from 1992 to 1993.

In the early 1990s, Barrymore’s rebelliousness played itself out on screen and in print. She forged an image as a manipulative teenage seductress, beginning with Poison Ivy (1992), which was a box office failure, but was popular on video and cable. Her character “Ivy” was ranked at #6 on the list of the top 26 “bad girls” of all time by Entertainment Weekly. In 1992, Barrymore was 17 when she posed nude with her then-fiancé, actor Jamie Walters, for the cover of the July issue of Interview magazine; she also appeared nude in pictures inside the issue.

In the 1992 crime film Guncrazy, Barrymore played a teenager who kills her sexually abusive stepfather after he teaches her how to use a gun. Variety remarked that she “pulls off impressively” her character, and Barrymore was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for her performance. In 1993, she took on the role of the younger sister of a murdered ballerina in No Place to Hide and starred as a writer followed by what is apparently her evil twin in Doppelganger. Both thrillers were panned by critics and failed to find an audience. She appeared in the Western comedy Bad Girls (1994), which follows four former prostitutes on the run following a justifiable homicide and prison escape. Roger Ebert, in his review for the film, wrote for Chicago Sun-Times: “What a good idea, to make a Western about four tough women. And what a sad movie.”

Barrymore married her first husband, Welsh-born Los Angeles bar owner Jeremy Thomas, on March 20, 1994. She filed for divorce from him less than two months later.

In late 1994, Barrymore began dating Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson, followed by MTV host and comedian Tom Green in 1999; she and Green were engaged in July 2000 and married a year later. Together, they starred in Charlie’s Angels and Green’s directorial film debut, Freddy Got Fingered. Green filed for divorce in December 2001, which was finalized on October 15, 2002.

During her appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman in 1995, Barrymore climbed onto David Letterman’s desk, flashed her breasts to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek as a birthday present. She modeled in a series of Guess? jeans ads during this time.

Barrymore voiced the title role of an anthropomorphic Jack Russell terrier in the television Christmas special Olive, the Other Reindeer, for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy. After Barrymore and Nancy Juvonen established Flower Films in 1995, she produced the company’s first film, Never Been Kissed (1999), in which she also starred as an insecure copy editor for the Chicago Sun-Times enrolling in high school as part of assigned research. While reviews from critics were mixed, CNN noted: “There are two words which describe why this film works: Drew Barrymore. Her comedic timing and willingness to go all out in her quest for a laugh combine to make Never Been Kissed a gratifying movie-going experience”. The film was a commercial success, grossing $84.5 million.

In Boys on the Side (1995), Barrymore played a pregnant girl who wants to escape from her abusive boyfriend. The film went little-seen in theaters but was positively received by critics. In the same year, she briefly appeared in Joel Schumacher’s film Batman Forever, as Sugar, a moll to Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones). In 1996, she made a brief but notable appearance in Wes Craven’s slasher Scream. Barrymore read the film’s script and was interested in being involved, approaching the production team herself to request a role. The producers were quick to take advantage of her unexpected interest, and signed her to play the lead role of Sidney Prescott, but when she was faced with unexpected commitments, she instead played the smaller role of Casey Becker and the lead role was given to Party of Five star Neve Campbell. Scream was released to critical acclaim and made $173 million worldwide. By the mid- and late 1990s, Barrymore re-established her image and continued to be a highly bankable star.

In 1999, Barrymore was honored by the Young Artist Foundation with its Former Child Star “Lifetime Achievement” Award commemorating her outstanding achievements within the film industry as a child actress. For her contributions to the film industry, Barrymore received a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004. Her star is located at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard.

In 2002, Barrymore starred with Sam Rockwell and Julia Roberts in George Clooney’s directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, based on the autobiography of television producer Chuck Barris. In 2003, she reprised her role as Dylan Sanders in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, and starred with Ben Stiller in Duplex. Flower Films and Happy Madison Productions produced 50 First Dates (2004), in which Barrymore took on the role of a woman with short-term memory loss, and who is the love interest of a marine veterinarian (Sandler). Summing up Barrymore’s appeal, Roger Ebert, in his review for the film, remarked that Barrymore displayed a “smiling, coy sincerity”, in what he described as an “ingratiating and lovable” film. 50 First Dates was a commercial success; it made US$120.9 million in North America and US$196.4 million worldwide.

In 2002, Barrymore began dating The Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti shortly after they met at a concert. Their relationship ended in January 2007. She began dating Justin Long, but they broke up in July 2008. Barrymore and Long reunited while filming Going the Distance in 2009, before breaking up again the following year.

In an interview with Contactmusic.com in 2003, Barrymore said that she had always considered herself bisexual, as she said: “I love a woman’s body. I think a woman and a woman together are beautiful, just as a man and a woman together are beautiful. Being with a woman is like exploring your own body, but through someone else”.

In the American adaptation of the 1997 eponymous British remake Fever Pitch (2005), Barrymore played the love interest of an immature school teacher (Jimmy Fallon). The film grossed a modest US$50 million worldwide and had generally favourable reviews by critics who felt it “has enough charm and on-screen chemistry between [Fallon and Barrymore] to make it a solid hit”. She and Hugh Grant starred in Music and Lyrics, which focuses on the relationship that evolves between a former pop music idol and an aspiring writer as they struggle to compose a song for a reigning pop diva. The romantic comedy, released in February 2007, received largely positive reviews, with The Washington Post finding the two to be “great together” in it. The film was a commercial success, grossing US$145 million globally.

Barrymore starred in Curtis Hanson’s little-seen poker-themed film Lucky You later in 2007, as an aspiring singer and the subject of the affections of a talented poker player, and also reunited with Never Been Kissed director Raja Gosnell for the commercial hit Beverly Hills Chihuahua (2008), in which she voiced the titular character, a richly pampered pet who gets dognapped in Mexico and has to escape from an evil Doberman.

Barrymore became a CoverGirl Cosmetics’ model and spokeswoman in 2007. In February 2015, she remained one of the faces of CoverGirl, alongside Queen Latifah and Taylor Swift. The company partnered with her because “she emulates the iconic image of CoverGirl with her fresh, natural beauty and energetic yet authentic spirit,” said Esi Eggleston Bracey, vice president and general manager of CoverGirl Cosmetics North America. She brought not only her personality into this endorsement but also her creative side, as she also helped create the ads. She was No. 1 in People’s annual 100 Most Beautiful People list in 2007. Later, she was named the new face for the Gucci jewelry line. As a model, Barrymore signed a contract with IMG Models New York City. She also was a spokeswoman for Crocs.

In May 2007, Barrymore was named Ambassador Against Hunger for the United Nations World Food Programme and later donated $1 million to the cause. As a guest photographer for a magazine series called “They Shoot New York”, she appeared on the cover holding a Pentax K1000 film camera. She expressed hopes of exposing her work in a gallery one day, as she had documented the most recent decade of her life with a Pentax camera.

In 2009, Barrymore starred in the ensemble comedy He’s Just Not That Into You, which received mixed reviews, partly due to her limited time on screen, while it grossed US$178 million worldwide. She played the lead role of Edith Bouvier Beale, the daughter of Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (Jessica Lange), in the HBO film Grey Gardens, directed by Michael Sucsy and based on the 1975 documentary of the same name. The television film was a huge success, winning five Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. Rolling Stone writer Peter Travels found Barrymore to be a “revelation” in her role. Barrymore received a nomination for the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie. She won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film and won the Screen Actors Guild for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries award.

In 2010, Barrymore starred with Justin Long in Nanette Burstein’s Going the Distance. The film follows a couple dealing the ups and downs of a long-distance relationship, while commuting between New York City and San Francisco. It garnered generally mixed reviews by critics, who summed it as “timelier and a little more honest than most romantic comedies”, and budgeted at US$32 million, the film made US$40 million at the worldwide box office.

On August 2, 2011, Barrymore directed the music video for the song “Our Deal,” for the band Best Coast, which features Chloë Grace Moretz, Miranda Cosgrove, Tyler Posey, Donald Glover, Shailene Woodley and Alia Shawkat. Barrymore starred with John Krasinski in the drama Big Miracle (2012), which covers Operation Breakthrough, the 1988 international effort to rescue gray whales from being trapped in ice near Point Barrow, Alaska. The film saw her play Rachel Krameron, based on Greenpeace activist Cindy Lowry. Despite a positive critical reception, the film flopped at the box office.

In early 2011, Barrymore began dating art consultant Will Kopelman, the son of former Chanel CEO Arie Kopelman. The couple announced their engagement in January 2012, and married on June 2, 2012, in Montecito, California. Four days later, the couple’s wedding image appeared on the cover of People magazine. Barrymore and Kopelman have two daughters: Olive born in 2012 and Frankie in 2014. On April 2, 2016, Barrymore and Kopelman released a statement confirming they had separated and intended to divorce. On July 15, 2016, Barrymore officially filed for divorce, which was finalized on August 3, 2016.

Barrymore grew up on Poinsettia Place in West Hollywood until the age of 7, when she moved to Sherman Oaks. In her 2015 memoir, Wildflower, she says she talks “like a valley girl” because she grew up in Sherman Oaks. She moved back to West Hollywood upon becoming emancipated at 14. Barrymore attended elementary school at Fountain Day School in West Hollywood and Country School.

From 2017 to 2019, Barrymore starred in the Netflix television series Santa Clarita Diet, portraying a real estate agent who, after experiencing a physical transformation into a zombie, starts craving human flesh. Along with co-star Timothy Olyphant, Barrymore also served as an executive producer on the single-camera series, which was favorably received upon its premiere; Rolling Stone felt that “much of [the series’ laughs] comes down to the uncrushable Drew Barrymore charm” and furthermore remarked: “The show is a welcome comeback for Barrymore, the eternally beloved grunge-era wild thing—it’s not just her big move into TV, but her first high-profile performance anywhere in years. In a way, it circles back to the roles she was doing in the early [90s], playing deadly vixens in flicks like Guncrazy or Doppelganger”.

Barrymore launched a women’s fashion line in fall 2017 in conjunction with Amazon.com called Dear Drew, which featured a pop-up shop in New York City that opened in November.

Barrymore starred in Jamie Babbit’s film The Stand-In. The film was set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2020, but was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On September 14, 2020, Barrymore premiered a syndicated daytime talk show, The Drew Barrymore Show.