Drew Barrymore’s Biggest Challenge

Drew Barrymore

She began acting as a child and has worked with top directors, but Drew Barrymore was never as terrified of a role until her latest part in “Grey Gardens.”

The television movie stars Barrymore as Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, the odd cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who lived a isolated life of wealth and extreme poverty before her death in 2002.

To make her role perfect, Barrymore had to transform herself, with makeup and costumes, from a college-age woman to an elderly woman, and she had to master the accent of upper-crust New York society. She says she had to campaign for the role, which only added to the stress when it came time to perform.

“This had a challenge in every freakin’ corner, it was terrifying,” Barrymore said. “But I just fell in love with her, who she was and who she became.”

Beale and her mother Edith “Big Edie” Bouvier Beale, were members of the New York City society, but after her father, Phelan Beale, left the family in the early days of the Great Depression, they slowly began to have hard rimes.

The mother and daughter took up residence in their manor, Grey Gardens, on Long Island, New York and as the years went by they lived on a smaller payment from Phelan Beale.

The house began to need repairs, and was covered in cats and rodents. It became such a disturbance that local officials threatened to tear down the mansion until Jackie O stepped-in to aid her cousin and aunt.

“She is a really fascinating person,” Barrymore said. “She’s tortured. She’s on an emotional seesaw all the time — one minute she’s happy and dancing around and entertaining, and the next minute, she’s full of sadness and heartache.”

Out of all the challenges, Barrymore said, was adopting the accent of a New York society woman was the hardest She worked with a voice coach for one year just to perfect the tones and language.