True Drew

Who is the real Drew Barrymore? You may know her as one of Hollywood's sexiest young actresses, the one who put the sizzle in her latest film, Boys On the Side, and wielded a six-shooter in last year's feminist Western, Bad Girls. Or maybe you recall her star turn in The Amy Fisher Story--the version that beat all others in the ratings because only Drew had the sweet-tart stuff that might make you identify with Joey Buttafuoco. Fright-film fans know her as the engine of sexual obsession in Poison Ivy and Doppelgänger. ("A psycho bitch from hell," raved Joe Bob Briggs.) Spielberg fans know her as the little girl in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; theater historians know of her acting ancestors, particularly her grandfather, John Barrymore. In spite of (or perhaps because of) her pedigree, she doesn't talk much about her past. "After I became famous through E.T., my life got really weird. One day I was a little girl, and the next I was being mobbed by people who wanted me to sign my autograph or pose for pictures, or who just wanted to touch me," she has said. "I was this seven-year-old who was supposed to be going on a mature 29." Now 19, Drew has had to grow up fast. But after fighting off the temptations of celeb life, she once again put her talent to work, and began showing some of the same magnetism grandpa John had. You may be looking at the film female of the Nineties.

Nymph, moll, object of male fantasies: In movies, Drew seldom plays the type of girl you want to take home to Mom. Her bad-girl persona isn't all playacting, she admits. She loves to have a good time, and with the way she exudes youthful exuberance and sex appeal, good times often find her even when she isn't looking. Perhaps that's what made her Amy Fisher a kind of working-class Lolita for our time. But Drew can play even more tempting types than she has shown so far now that she has blossomed into young womanhood. The proof is on these pages--all you have to do is keep turning them.

In the Hollywood of John Barrymore's day, a glimpse of stocking was considered quite shocking. Even in our less repressed era, his granddaughter has usually shied away from nudity on film. A glance or a smirk served to suggest the passions that drove the killer beauties Drew has played, but audiences had to imagine the rest. Once she became old enough to vote and do other adult things, however, she decided to do the nude scene to end all nude scenes: her own Playboy pictorial. What Drew calls her "sexy girl act" made a strong impression on us, especially when we began to suspect she was only being herself. Even at 19, Drew retains a stubborn streak of teenage goofiness in her, a teacher's-pest wildness you can't miss in these photographs. But there is something else on display here as well. Call it womanhood, a quality that allows Drew to seem Venus-like even while she's riding the waves on an inflatable raft. As she regards herself in the looking glass, she must like what she sees. We certainly do.

Fine, she still acts like the teenager she is. She may drive too fast, dress too slinkily and make faces when she's supposed to be serious. But today she's also unveiling a maturity that many Barrymore-watchers never expected to see. It is the answer to the question we started with. Who is Drew? Surprise--she's a woman at last.

Drew tells us that she decided to do this pictorial because of her respect for lenswoman Ellen von Unwerth, whose photographs she calls works of art. She adds, "I was also intrigued about working with Playboy, and I thought the amalgamation of everyone doing this together would be an amazing and daring adventure." Judging from the outcome of the collaboration, you would have to say she was right. Of course, posing for the photographs on these pages isn't all that Drew has been up to lately. She has the Barrymore family tradition to uphold, after all. Appropriately, the actress is coming off two movie projects, the first being Boys On the Side, directed by Steel Magnolias' Herbert Ross. In Boys, Drew takes off on a cross-country jaunt with Whoopi Goldberg and Mary-Louise Parker. After that comes a more serious effort, Mad Love, in which she plays a manic-depressive who is searching for love and sanity. But while you're watching her in the movie theaters, Drew will be out of here: She's taking off on a world tour, "to expand my mind." It's nice that she left behind some pictures for us to remember her by.