Drew Barrymore: Late father blamed for her "relationships with men"

Drew Barrymore: Late father blamed for her "relationships with men"

Drew Barrymore opens up about her estranged relationship with her parents, In April's  W.

Barrymore says she still has "no contact" with her mother, Jaid, from whom she legally emancipated herself at the age of 17 because she was a bad influence. (Barrymore famously went to rehab twice by age 13.)

"My mother and I split ways when I was very young and have never really reconciled," she says.

In Grey Gardens, her upcoming HBO movie, Barrymore plays Edie, the devoted daughter of Edith Bouvier Beale, a first cousin to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. "Edie chose her mother over the world," Barrymore says, adding that their relationship was "a love story."

Drew Barrymore, in real life, says she and her mother are "the polar opposite."

Drew's relationship with her father, actor John Barrymore, was less arduous.

An alcoholic, he left before she was born and was absent for much of her childhood.

"He was so feeble, I could actually nail him down," she sarcastically says. "He was such a flighty bird unattainable and off doing his own thing. I'm sure it's affected my relationships with men. I'm sure I'm sadder about it than I admit, but I accept that a lot easier than my mother's and my relationship, which is more tumultuous."

She reconciled with him before he died of bone marrow cancer, at age 72, in 2004. Barrymore, then 29, even paid for his care.

Although he never apologized for abandoning her, she recalls a moment when they were sitting together in his room and he looked down at her bare feet. "Ah, you were made perfectly," he told her.

"And I was like, 'This was worth hanging out with you for,'" she says.

(Barrymore says she has since built her own familial "tribe," including Cameron Diaz , producing partner Nancy Juvonen and Chris Miller, vice president of Flower Films, Barrymore's production company.)

As for her love life, Barrymore says, "I'm just learning who I am and how relationships work and how to make them function. No different from anyone else."

She was married twice -- for eight weeks to bar owner Jeremy Thomas in 1994, and for five months to Tom Green in 2001.

But Barrymore (who split with Justin Long last year) says she has had the tightest bond with Strokes rocker Fabrizio Moretti, whom she dated for five years until 2007.

It was "one of the most, if not the most, important relationships I've had in my life," she says. "We're still very close."

Professionally, things are looking better for Barrymore than her personal life.

She recently confirmed that she is being considered to direct Eclipse, the third Twilight installment, and releases her directorial debut, Whip It!, later this year.

Says the star, "I'm finally like, I can do these things. Now I can start to experience more joy and not be so worried all the time that would be a really important liberation for me."