Drew Barrymore has opened up about her harrowing first memory of her father, claiming he threw her against a wall when she was just three years old.
The actress and TV host, 48, was born into a family of actors on her father's side, with all of her paternal great-grandparents and grandparents being actors, her grandfather John Barrymore being one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation.
However, Drew has revealed that her father, John Drew Barrymore, appeared determined to "burn down the dynasty" and was a chaotic figure in her young life.
Drew herself started acting at the age of seven in E.T., becoming a star overnight as the movie became the biggest blockbuster of its time, and says working on-set gave her the much-needed stability her home life did not.
Speaking in a new interview with New York magazine, Drew revealed that she found solace from a miserable home and school life on movie sets, and that the actors and crew she worked with was a makeshift family for her while production was underway.
Despite the huge success of her grandfather, who was a lauded Shakespearean actor of his time, her father only achieved moderate acclaim in his own acting career, which had died out by the time Drew was born.
She claims his descent into alcoholism made him an abusive drunk who left her mother, Ildiko Jaid Barrymore, to live an "eccentric" life "houseless and shoeless" and would only appear in their lives when he needed money.
Drew says her first memory of her father was from when she was three years old and he "stormed in and tossed her into a wall", and claims he would do things such as hold her hand above the flame of a burning candle and tell her that pain was in her imagination.
She added: "Talk about someone who was not a careerist. He was like, 'I will burn this f**king dynasty to the ground.'"
Drew previously opened up about life with her father on Uninterrupted's The Shop series, produced by LeBron James and Maverick Carter.
She revealed at the time: "[My grandparents] were all dead and long done, and my dad was a drug addict and he didn't wear shoes.
"He was really crazy but like, an awesome character and sort of like Gollum meets Oscar Wilde on drugs. He was just so cool and fascinating and I could tell at a young age, 'Oh this guy is not capable of s**t.'"
However, she revealed how she tackled the difficult situation at a young age, explaining: "Let's just love him for who he is and not expect anything from him."
Drew's father's itinerant existence became worse as his mental and physical health declined, and despite being estranged from his family and children, the actress helped him as he neared the end of his life.
In 2003, Drew moved John closer to her home, despite having a difficult relationship with him throughout her life, and paid for his medical bills until he died from cancer in 2004 at the age of 72.
Her mother, Ildiko, meanwhile treated Drew like a "friend and client" after managing her, and introduced her into the adult world of partying at nightclubs such as Studio 54.
Drew has often spoken about her early experiences with drinking and drugs - stating in her 1990 memoir Little Girl Lost that she had her first glass of champagne at eight years old, first beer at nine at Rob Lowe's 20th birthday party, and started doing cocaine at 12 years old as it allowed her to "soar above [her] depression and sadness".
She was put into rehab by her mother at the time but was in and out of it for a year and a half as Ildiko pulled her out of it to film movies in the meantime, and she ended up emancipating herself from her mother soon after, going to live with David Crosby and his wife Jan Dance when she left rehab.
Drew credits Steven Spielberg, the director of E.T. as being "the only person in my life to this day that ever was a parental figure" and even asked if he could be her dad, and while he said he couldn't fulfil that role for her, he did agree to be her godfather instead.
The famed director used to let Drew stay with him at weekends, took her to places like Disneyland, and even bought her cat called Gertie, and made sure she wasn't dressing older than she was, including making her wipe off red lipstick when she arrived at his office wearing it.
He previously said: "She was staying up way past her bedtime, going to places she should have only been hearing about, and living a life at a very tender age that I think robbed her of her childhood. Yet I felt very helpless because I wasn’t her dad. I could only kind of be a consigliere to her."
