She’s gone from child star to director, but Drew Barrymore feels ready for the challenge. Steve Pratt reports.

HAVING been in front of the camera for three decades, it could only be a matter of time before Drew Barrymore sat in the director’s chair. “I handled my godfather’s scripts when I was six years old. I’ve been training for this my whole life, and I’m OK with ‘slow and steady wins the race’,”

she says. “After producing for 15 years, working with all the filmmakers I worked with, learning what I like and don’t like and really immersing myself in the process, I knew what I was walking into. You still have to be humble and know you’re on a learning curve because directing is a whole other animal, no matter how good a producer you are, or how much you’ve been watching people. To become the captain of a ship is new territory.”

Barrymore makes her directorial debut with Whip It, set in the girl power world of the roller derby. Ellen Page, Oscar-nominated star of Juno, plays a small town Texas girl swapping beauty pageants for the bruising world of mayhem on skates.

Barrymore, now 35, rose to prominence as young Gertie in ET The Extra-Terrestrial directed by her godfather Steven Spielberg. Both her parents and her grandparents are actors, and her godparents are Spielberg and Sophia Loren.

Her wealth of experience has taught her to be decisive and to be an actor’s director.

“I’m certainly not turned on by tyrants and I would never be one, and I don’t think the best work comes out of it. It comes out of joy, encouragement, nurturing environment and challenging each other,” she says. “The first thing I am proud of is that I’m so prepared, so buttoned-up. I have worked with filmmakers who are a little indecisive, and I find them immediately unsexy.”

She says roller derby is just a backdrop, a metaphor for the story. “I thought it was a cool, unique, innovative sport that hadn’t been exploited before, especially in its new form,”

she explains.

She drew heavily on her own experiences for the lead character of Bliss Cavendar, who defies her mother by enrolling in the heavy contact sport with an all-girl team. “It’s the most personal thing I’ve ever done. I do know how it feels to have a tumultuous relationship with your mother and so I was able to inject a lot of my personal experiences into it,”

she admits.

The film, written and based on the book of the same name by Shauna Cross, also sees Bliss experience the throes of first love with musician Oliver. It’s something Barrymore can also identify with, having been married twice, and had high-profile relationships with Strokes’ drummer Fabrizio Moretti and fellow actor Justin Long. “We all have to have that rite of passage of dating the tortured artist that seems cooler than we think we are and we aspire to be like them,” she explains.

But Whip It is no “chick flick”, she says. “I’m a woman so I’m going to make stories about women because I understand them but I can’t stand the term ‘chick flick’.

That turns me off. I’m as turned off by that as any guy because I am a dude,” she insists. “I have a very male mentality – the comedy in the film is not little girl comedy. It’s boy comedy, it’s androgynous comedy.”

She insisted that the studio market the film to male audiences too. “It was upsetting to have a studio put out ‘It’s a roller derby movie’. I kept encouraging them to market to boys and men, because there was a sports element and when I go to roller derby games, there are a lot of males. They love the sexiness, the raunchiness and the funness of these girls beating the crap out of each other,”

she adds.

The Californian-born star appears as tough roller skater Smashley Simpson in the film, had the painful experience of learning to roller skate. “I had to do insurance tests. I had EKGs (electrocardiogram tests), urine, blood, and coils strapped in me. The doctors said ‘well you’re an actor and director and you’re doing stunts so this is the procedure’.” She still has plenty of challenges to fulfil.

“I’d love to continue to challenge myself in directing and try some writing. I’ve been working on my photography book and I’m just more interested in things behind the scenes right now,” she says. “I like family themes. Ironically I don’t have one but I know how important it is and how you can make one so I think I am inspired by family.”

■ Whip It opens in cinemas this week