Drew Barrymore is turning to look at her Playboy cover almost 30 years later, but now with a different pair of eyes since I became a mother of two daughters.
The actress opened up in a lengthy Instagram post on Friday, captioned “PHONE HOME” (referring to her 1982 film ET the alien), saying she wanted to “put myself out there as a parent” in a “very vulnerable way.”
This included Barrymore recalling her childhood in Hollywood and growing up in an “unorthodox” way, with her “experience of being so out of touch and going into adult environments and working” as a child. The actress also recounted posing for the January 1995 issue of Playboyshortly before his twentieth birthday.
“I was exposed to many hedonistic scenes at parties and even in my own home, where the viewing was highly sensitive in nature and caused me great shame,” she wrote. “We, as children, are not meant to see these images. And yes, I was even a big exhibitionist when I was little, because of these environments I was in. I considered it art and I still don't judge it.”
Barrymore continued: “But when I realized a chaste artistic moment in Playboy in my early 20s, I thought it was going to be a magazine that would hardly resurface because it was paper. I never thought there would be an Internet. I didn't know so many things.”
Now, as a parent, the Drew Barrymore Show the host is determined to “protect them” [her kids] the way I wanted to be protected.” She never “thought in my wildest dreams that kids would be in my boat of too much excess and access” with modern technology and social media, which is one reason she's not yet ready for her daughters, Olive, 12, and Frankie, 10, to have smartphones.
She explained that she “emancipated herself at 14 and moved into her first apartment,” which made her feel like she was “starting my life over on my own terms.”
“But in a consistent message to myself, I found that there was no one to take care of me,” Barrymore continued. “My mother was castigated for allowing me to spiral out of control. I have so much empathy for her now, because I am a mother. And none of us are perfect.”
But thanks to the kindness people have shown her throughout her life since she was “lucky enough to start interacting with people” at a young age, she now wants to “give that kindness back.” And the Charlie's Angels star wants to do this by helping to “protect our children from being put in situations where they can’t always control the rhetoric of multiparty dynamics that is being recorded in a cloud only to potentially haunt them one day.”
“I messed up in public when I was 13 and people were shocked,” Barrymore recalled of her traumatic childhood experience. “I was on the cover of National Investigator and every other magazine as a tragedy over. And I thought that would be my narrative forever. I wanted to disappear from the planet and never be seen again.”
Instead, the 50 First Dates star said that “he put one foot in front of the other and got my life back on track, only to make more mistakes along the way, but that's life. We make mistakes. And people have been so kind to me. They've forgiven me. And they've encouraged me as I've grown.”
“So yeah, it's my karma and life's work to encourage people back!” Barrymore added. “We all fall down and get back up. Over and over again. Life is a roller coaster. And what a ride it is. But here on earth it's a timed journey. We have to make the best of it and take care of each other in the process.”