Drew Barrymore Spent 18 Months Inside a Psychiatric Facility

Drew Barrymore was a working actress at seven, drinking at nine and in rehab at thirteen. She spent eighteen months at Van Nuys Psychiatric Hospital, an experience she wrote about in her 1990 memoir Little Girl Lost. At fourteen she was legally emancipated from her parents. The industry that had made her a child star largely stopped calling.

The comeback took years, and The Wedding Singer was the film that sealed it. Released by New Line Cinema on February 13, 1998, the Adam Sandler romantic comedy was made for about $18 million and took roughly $123 million worldwide. It reset both leads as box-office draws and started one of the longest-running partnerships in American comedy.

Barrymore and Sandler went on to make 50 First Dates and Blended together, and she has called him her cinematic soulmate, saying what they represent on screen is admiration rather than chemistry. She later built her own production company and a daytime talk show.

She was written off at fourteen. She was a studio anchor by twenty-three.