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When she was 15, Drew, who is now 26, legally emancipated herself from her mother. She still has a distant relationship with her father, John Barrymore Jr.
"That means we've essentially been estranged for a decade. I honestly didn't think we'd ever reconcile," said Drew in an interview on Sunday.
Last year, Drew filmed the Penny Marshall film Riding In Cars With Boys, which opens on Oct. 19, in which she plays a woman ill-equipped to raise a son on her own.
"The more I worked on the character and the more we filmed the more I began longing to have some kind of relationship with my own mother."
Barrymore says it was her husband, Canadian gross-out comic Tom Green, who "pushed me into making the first move. It was me who called my mother and asked to meet her for Mother's Day."
Drew says Green assured her "the pain and fear I had of meeting her after all those years was nothing compared to what I would feel if I never tried to have her in my life again."
Drew met with Jaid on Mother's Day "with Tom in tow. I couldn't have done it without him. It was the start we needed.
"Tom then arranged for my mom to spend Christmas with Tom and me and his parents in Ottawa. My mom and I now see each other every couple of months. We both realize we don't have to be best friends or get involved in each other's careers. It's enough that we are finally back in each other's lives."