It Had To Be Drew

The actress-entrepreneur delivers a new CBS Talk Show full of heart, humor, and hope. Would you expect anything less?

- By David Hochman

THERE’S NO SCHOOL FOR TALK SHOW HOSTS, BUT DREW

Barrymore has been studying for the job since childhood. Promoting her first big movie role, in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at age 7, the precocious newcomer popped out her fake front teeth (kid-size dentures put in place by her handlers while her baby teeth grew in) and plunked them onto Johnny Carson’s desk. (“Now, don’t forget that when you leave,” The Tonight Show host said, unable to contain his laughter.) At 15, after years of personal struggle and a widely publicized stint in rehab, Barrymore confessed on Oprah that she had grown up too fast. Then there was that time in 1995 when Barrymore climbed atop David Letterman’s Late Show desk and flashed him on air for his birthday. “It’s almost like I was a different person,” she says now of that classic TV moment, “but I still think it’s completely hilarious.”

In short, Barrymore, 45, whose great-grandparents and grandparents (including the renowned John Barrymore) were actors, was born for the hosting chair, although she is not doing much sitting lately. Since the debut last September of The Drew Barrymore Show, her new syndicated daytime talk program, the Hollywood royal, entrepreneur, and single mom (Frankie, 6, and Olive, 8, are her daughters with ex-husband Will Kopelman) has been “moving pretty much nonstop, even after the whole world stopped moving,” she says.