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The stories that I want to tell, especially as a director, don’t necessarily have a perfect ending because, the older you get, the more you appreciate a good day versus a happy ending. You understand that life continues on the next day the reality of things is what happens tomorrow.
The people I grew up around who I really liked were quick on the draw. It always just wowed me. And my mum would make weird funny comments. I can see in myself her self-deprecating, hippie humour. I can’t take myself too seriously.
I love inventive food, but I want the classic dishes to taste like how I remember them. I get a little bummed out when there is too much fancy stuff going on and it doesn’t resemble the original dish at all.
When you’re young, you’re always wondering when you’re actually going to feel like a grownup. And I think you probably fear it, in a sense, too. There’s a danger to feeling like an adult… like this whimsical kid in you is going to die or something. And then all of a sudden, one day you kind of feel like an adult and it’s really nice.
I grew up in a family that was multifaceted, sexually oriented, and pretty much open to everything. And because I was working, my friends were all adults. I had a tough time going to different schools because people knew me from films and I was the fat child who got beaten up every day.
When I did ‘E.T.,’ it sort of solidified the only family I know are these film crews. These gypsies. These filmmakers. That was the solidification and the clicking revelations of ‘This is what I want to do with my life and this is where I’m going to survive.’
Being a Barrymore didn’t help me, other than giving me a great sense of pride and a strange spiritual sense that I felt OK about having the passion to act. It made sense because my whole family had done it and it helped rationalise it for me.
I’d definitely be the kind of parent who enabled my child’s dreams. I’d just watch and nurture and guide them. I have the blueprints of what not to do… I think I’d be a good parent, actually.
I’ve always said that one night, I’m going to find myself in some field somewhere, I’m standing on grass, and it’s raining, and I’m with the person I love, and I know I’m at the very point I’ve been dreaming of getting to.
I’m a total control freak and love to participate in the design of every single aspect of life.