September 19, 2003
Drew brings new beau to town
By ANN MARIE McQUEEN
OTTAWA -- Why on earth would Tom Green's ex-wife, Drew Barrymore, want to fly to Ottawa and spend a night in his hometown with her hip new boyfriend?

"It was the talk of the day," said a Sheraton Hotel valet yesterday. "Everyone was all surprised. You never see big stars like that around here."

It appears the 27-year-old L.A.-based Charlie's Angels star flew into town Wednesday with her boyfriend of five months, The Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti, 22.

A fellow passenger told the Sun he spotted the snugly smooching pair on his flight from New York. And though hotel management wouldn't comment on whether she had been a guest, one employee said it was definitely Barrymore he saw in the lobby.

"She was sporting black hair," he said. "It looked pretty good."

Staffers said the pair checked in and later headed out on the town. A Sheraton bellman told the Sun he put Barrymore in a cab yesterday morning.

Yesterday afternoon, a Sun photographer captured the curly-haired, aviator-wearing Moretti strolling up to the hotel alone, where he soon hopped into a gold SUV and was driven to the airport.

"She's already gone," Moretti told another Sun shooter once there.

The pair told hotel staffers they were just in town for fun. Barrymore hasn't been in Ottawa since splitting with Green after just five months of marriage. The pair divorced in Oct. 2002.

It isn't the first time she managed to slip in and out of the capital unphotographed. When the then-newlyweds visited Green's parents at their Gloucester home in August 2001, Barrymore emerged from the home dressed up like an alien -- complete with a Pizza Pizza box and tinfoil mask -- to outwit Sun cameras.