Drew grit (From The Northern Echo)

Drew grit

9:52am Saturday 4th September 2010 in

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Drew Barrymore is the Hollywood wild child star who grew up into a successful actress, producer and director. She talks to Steve Pratt about kissing, phone sex and why she finds texting offensive.

DREW BARRYMORE is late. But when she finally arrives at the London hotel for the interview, she apologies for her tardiness and blames the traffic. She says sorry again after the chat is over. This isn’t the behaviour you might expect from one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, whose success as both an actress and producer has surely earned her the right to keep people waiting without apology.

There are no diva-ish tantrums or toeing the PR line with Barrymore. She says it like it is, her experience coloured by being part of an acting dynasty and a film career that began at seven when she was directed in ET by her godfather, Steven Spielberg.

But she failed to avoid the trap into which so many child stars fall, going spectacularly out of control with well-chronicled tales of excessive boozing and drug-taking before she was 15.

There were two short-lived marriages (one lasting only six weeks), several engagements and many romances.

At 35, she has yet to settle down. Perhaps too busy with a career that, in addition to acting, takes in directing (her debut, the roller derby drama Whip In, was released earlier this year) and running her own production company.

She’s back in front of the camera in Going The Distance, a romantic comedy about a couple tested by a long-distance relationship. An intriguing twist is having former boyfriend Justin Long as her leading man. There’s no doubting the chemistry between them on screen, but both remain vague on whether they’re still a couple.

“It’s very rare to show up to work every day and know you’re going to be working off a natural chemistry,” she says, looking casual in long dress, jacket, hair pulled back, minimum make-up. Here’s one star who doesn’t feel the need to spend hours with a stylist before going public.

“Justin’s really someone with the sharpest wit that I’ve ever met. It’s thrilling. He’s like this nerdy, pasty, funny guy – then you go out to dinner with him and you watch the ladies.

He floors them with humour. I always found that very appealing and sexy. I’m not the jealous type, I’m more like, ‘Isn’t he great?’.”

Kissing him on camera was no hardship, as it has been with other actors. “Some kissers, you’re like, ‘you’re the worst kisser I’ve ever kissed and I’ve got to work so much harder to sell this kiss’. And then you kiss someone like Justin, who’s just a really phenomenal kisser, and you’re like, ‘this is gonna work great’.”

But which, it must be asked, was more difficult in Going The Distance – filming the phone sex or sex on the dining table? Again, Barrymore doesn’t take the usual route favoured by actresses about it just being a job. “I want to pretend, oh it’s so awkward, but I have to say to go to work and simulate sex, it’s so fun. And those actors who go, ‘oh, it’s so awkward’, I’m like, oh shut up. You get to go with a hot actor and make out. No, I have no empathy with them,” she says.

Being famous is a disadvantage when it comes to dating. “You want them to ask about you. It’s so exciting when people are interested in your day, or what you like. What I really love is the guy who gives me a Proust questionnaire.

How would you like to die? What do you collect? You just want to meet someone who’s going to get to the core of you, in clever and interesting routes.

“I have to say, my home motto is never go into a date, let alone a relationship, as if you’ve been hurt before. It always has to be a fresh clean slate.”

The relationship of the couple in the film suffers as they’re forced to spend long periods apart. Barrymore feels she’s been in long distance relationships, with both friends and family, most of her life.

Keeping it fresh and alive takes a lot more work and one of her ways is putting pen to paper. “I’m a bodacious letter writer,” she says.

“It’s one of those forms where you just speak in such a different way. Even beyond email or text or phone call. You have this platform on which you rise to the most beautiful occasion, you speak in an old-fashioned eloquence, a place from the heart. What comes out is something that’s so much more poetically truthful.

“Then that person can carry that around and can say, ‘god, my girl feels like this? I can hide it under my pillow or carry it in my briefcase or whatever’. I have yet to meet men who reciprocate that.”

Worse than not writing would be sending her a text. “I find texting really offensive,” she says.

“I feel like there’s a false sense of intimacy. I feel there’s a part of brain that goes, ‘I’ve checked in’ and I don’t think it’s enough. For a woman who’s romantic, if you’re dating someone and get this ‘c u soon’, you’re like, ‘f*** off, we’re done’.”

SO far, unlike her screen character, there’s no happy ending in her romantic life. “People make mistakes. I’m human and have never pretended to be unflawed,” she says on the subject of her marriages.

Now, she’s taken time off to be on her own after a “three year merry-go-round that was so intense and professionally orientated that I let my personal life take a back seat”. She’s spent the past six months “just being so in love with my friends”, a luxury that makes her happy.

“I will find somebody, I believe. I’m not cynical, I’m not jaded. But I feel that maybe the next relationship will be something that’s really interesting because it won’t be puppy love.

“I travel the world, I’ve become a writer, I do photography. I spend many nights having dinner by myself. You have to prise me out of the house.

“I feel that I would contribute a lot more to a relationship because I wouldn’t be necessarily looking to the other person for my source of identity and happiness.

“You get to the point where you really want a more mature relationship. There is crazy love and fun love. And then the other side of me thinks, I want easy love and fulfilling love.

“I’ve had a really wonderful run of great relationships.

Also, the boyfriends I’ve been fortunate enough to be with are the coolest guys and I’m blessed to have been in their lives.”

■ Going The Distance (15) opens in cinemas on Friday.