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Quite a twist for the girl who just a few years ago was making her name, on and off screen, as Hollywood's bad girl.
On screen there was Mad Love, Bad Girls and Poison Ivy. A bit too much like her private life.
Flashing her breasts for David Letterman. Being accused of seducing Val Kilmer on the set of Batman Forever. Posing nude with lover Jamie Walters and then solo for a Playboy photo story. Marrying bartender Jeremy Thomas after a six-week courtship only to divorce him after two months.
"I did a few bad-girl roles in movies and got stereotyped. Producers offered me every bad-girl role going and people assumed I was just playing myself," explains Barrymore.
"I had fun with the image for a while but I want to put it in my past."
Playing Cinderella should go a long way toward accomplishing Barrymore's image make-over.
It's a step that started with Barrymore playing the sweet innocent in Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You.
She has just completed filming Home Fries in Texas, a film in which she plays a sweet, unmarried pregnant girl.
Her on-screen boyfriend is played by Luke Wilson, who just happens to be her off-screen squeeze.
"We're very much in love," insists Barrymore.
"Luke and I were cast as lovers in two movies (Home Fries and Independence) before we ever actually met. I knew who he was but that didn't prepare me for our first meeting."
Barrymore insists it was her first experience with love at first sight.
"I was so afraid he could tell how smitten I was with him and even more afraid that he wouldn't be the least bit interested in me."
Playing a pregnant woman has made Barrymore aware of just how much she wants a child of her own.
"I'm going to wait till the time is right. That could be in a month or it could be in five years. I'm just 22, so there's no great rush."
Barrymore would like to put her love life in perspective.
She is in love with Wilson.
She did love husband Thomas and boyfriends Walters and (Hole guitarist) Eric Erlandson.
"I wouldn't be with someone if I didn't at least think I loved them."
She admits to being "slightly" bisexual. "There's always been something androgynous and ambidextrous about my sexuality. It's no news flash, but I haven't been with a woman in about two years.
"I've always been more interested in romance than in sex anyway. I'm actually more sensual than sexual."
She insists she did not seduce Kilmer.
"We were only ever good friends, but you can't be friends with a man in Hollywood without people assuming it's sexual."
She does have a crush on David Letterman.
"I've had a crush on him since I was seven. Before that it was Ted Koppel. I've never acted on my crush because each time I've met Dave, I've been heavily involved with someone else."
She did not have an affair with her Everyone Says I Love You co-star Edward Norton.
Besides, Drew doesn't need any part-time lovers.
This Cinderella has found her prince.
For the time being anyway.