HOLLYWOOD -- Put most producers in a stress situation and it's not a pretty sight. Drew Barrymore is an obvious exception.

Nonetheless, as the fire alarm at the Four Seasons Hotel sounds during her interview, Barrymore puts her hands over her ears and says, "I've gotta tell you. I'm freaking out here! I have more sensitive hearing than my dog!"

Finally the noise stops and a mechanical voice says, "We have experienced a false alarm ..."

"No s---!" she remarks sarcastically to the wall speaker. And with that the clanging starts again, to groans all around.

Again it stops, and the voice begins, "We have experienced a false alarm. Please resume your normal activities."

"F--- you!" she yells dramatically at the robot voice.

"Sorry," she says, sheepishly, to the humans present. Most have probably never seen a cuter tantrum. And her tone suggests she's also sort of apologizing to the squawk box.

Imagine Drew Barrymore as your boss. For the few hundred people it took to put together the high school comedy Never Been Kissed, imagination wasn't necessary. Under the aegis of her company, Flower Films, the 24-year-old Barrymore makes her debut as an executive producer for the film, in which she plays a Chicago reporter named Josie Geller who goes undercover as a high school student.

The rub: Josie Geller was a geek in high school (with the nickname "Josie Grossie") and returning to the scene of the pain just brings on more of the same.

"To capitalize on the pain and humour of your awkward moments, well that's just so interesting to me," says Barrymore. "The movie's set in high school, but the feelings it taps into are the feelings that everybody feels, when you're in line and your credit card gets refused and everybody's staring at you and you're just so embarrassed. Or, y'know, you're talking to someone and you go to the bathroom and you realize you had a booger on your nose the whole time."

And the difference between Drew Barrymore and the average person is that she would let you know about her booger immediately after it happened. She has made an art of coming clean, from her childhood drug addiction (not your little girl from ET anymore) to her frank admission that her latest love affair -- a three-year relationship with actor Luke Wilson -- is history. "I went out with Luke for three great years. I am so in love with him and it's too bad that we couldn't stick it out longer -- not that three years isn't a while. I would like to have had it go on forever. I think you should go into every relationship believing that it has the capacity and potential to do that. I say be a dreamer, believe in it all."

It's this unblinking openness that had her host Saturday Night Live a few weeks back, opening with a song about her life (including lyrics about the drugs, her trashy teen films, her short-lived marriage to a man she'd just met, flashing her breasts on live TV to David Letterman, etc.).

I tell her that the song 'floored me.' "In a good way or a bad way?" she asks, with what seems like real concern. Assured of the former, she says, "I was lucky, I worked with Tim Herlihy who's their head writer and who wrote The Wedding Singer, so I felt very safe. I said, 'All I want to do in my monologue is two things. I want it to be a musical number 'cause to me those are so funny. And then I said, I really wanna make fun of myself, but I don't want it to be so mean that I get a bad taste in my mouth. I don't want it to be so horrible that you walk away going, "She is an asshole." I just wanted it to be fun. I love making fun of myself. When I got to play the 'Josie Grossy' (flashbacks) it was so much more fulfilling than any other part of the movie.

"That's what it's about. I just think if you choose a public life, you might as well be honest. Don't sweep it under the carpet. Let it be out there."

The public high-wire act that is her life seems key to her popularity. "Everybody in the audience just seems to want good things to happen to her," says director Raja Gosnell.

What is it like to work for such a person? Different, certainly. Gosnell called their relationship "a partnership."

Michael Vartan, who plays the male lead, a teacher who's inappropriately attracted to "teenage" Josie, is ferociously a fan. "When she decided she wanted me, she went to bat for me for a month and a half, because Fox didn't want an unknown in the role -- understandably, because I mean I wouldn't pay to see myself. But I'll always be grateful for her sticking her neck out.

"I mean, the first few days I worked for her, I was like, 'This girl's not for real, nobody's that nice. Bear in mind this is a 24- year-old girl who is starring in this movie and producing it. She's got to deal with why the van didn't arrive at its location, why the socks are the wrong color, why 75 extras aren't where they're supposed to be, and now you have to cry in the scene.

"But if it was a security guard, craft services people, extras, she treated everyone like they were the king, the princess of that moment. You see very few people do that in this business, especially when they're dealing with so much pressure and s---. It's usually more like screaming and yelling."

In order to stay focused, Barrymore says she purged her life of thoughts of other projects. Now that she's moving on, she's turning her attention as producer/actor to the update of Charlie's Angels. "It would involve developing new characters and paying homage to the old ones at the same time. What I love about it is it's girls getting to do what boys do. Not girls being men, but girls being feminine and doing what men do." There's been plenty of gossip about who'd be cast with her (including Bond girl Michelle Yeoh and Jada Pinkett). By way of no comment, Barrymore says, "I've found one thing in this business is you don't talk about it, you just do it."

She's also allowing herself free time, solo. "Not having a boyfriend, I'm, like, the happiest I've ever been. I travel by myself now, I went to Hawaii by myself. I'm so into romance. I see couples and it's so yummy and beautiful and I can't wait 'til it happens to me again. And yet I'm excited to be on my own. I'm amazed at how thrilled to bits I am to wake up every day."


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