"I'm a Cali-girl through and through, but it was just nice to not be in the busy rush of Los Angeles," Barrymore says of her stint in Anchorage, where she shunned Internet and e-mail in favor of letter-writing and reading. Shooting for the film (opening Friday) took place in the fall of 2010, and it could not have come at a better time for the now 36-year-old actress who has been a mainstay in pop culture for three decades.
"There's a book called Slowing Down to the Speed of Life, and there's something about that title that totally rang true about this experience," Barrymore says. "It's hard to check out of your life for three solid months. It's even harder when you get older. But I really did dive in."
Perhaps "dive out" would be a better term. In Big Miracle, a fictionalized retelling of the 1988 effort to rescue three gray whales trapped by ice near the Arctic Circle, Barrymore plays a Greenpeace activist. It is her first big-screen acting project in two years and probably will be her last for a while: No other firm projects are lined up.
That's all just fine, she says. Barrymore is in no rush to find a new venture and is more content to focus on her personal life, which includes her fiancé, 34-year-old art consultant Will Kopelman.
"I've done all of this for 35 years," Barrymore says of her career. "I think maybe it's OK to put the life first for a minute. I don't really know this feeling. It's new and exciting."
After all, Barrymore began her entertainment career at age 11 months when she appeared in a dog food commercial. Since finding child stardom after 1982's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, she had a famously turbulent adolescence that eventually made way for an adult career that saw her move to rom-com queen (The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates). She also is a successful producer, director and, lately, professional photographer.
While chatting at her Flower Films office, Barrymore buzzes from just viewing a photo spread she shot for the fashion glossy V featuring some her favorite rock bands in a house party theme. A few minutes earlier, the entire office had erupted in cheers after seeing the pictures in the magazine's current music issue.
"We just opened the magazine," she says. "You kind of don't believe it's going to happen until you see it and then it's real."
About that engagement
Even more real is the effect of two new pieces of jewelry on what she calls her "everyday outfit" of blue jeans, worn boots and casual gray sweatshirt. The first is a two-heart pendant around her neck held together by a gold safety pin, a gift from Kopelman.
"These are these wonderful hearts my man has given me, but the chain broke so I put it on the safety pin," she explains.
The second is the 4-carat, radiant-cut diamond engagement ring Kopelman presented to her when he proposed in December, after the two had been dating for nearly a year.
"I am trying to get used to it," Barrymore says, beaming. (She had been linked romantically before to stars such as Justin Long and Luke Wilson and was married twice, most recently to actor Tom Green, from whom she was divorced in 2002.)
When she took on Miracle in 2010, she had yet to meet Kopelman, and the biggest adjustment she was making was to a different kind of ice. Instead of shooting the film on a soundstage, director Ken Kwapis informed his star that the production would be filmed entirely in Alaska.
Kwapis reconstructed the ice fields in Anchorage and filmed there, rather than in Barrow, which is much closer to the Arctic Circle. But the surroundings still packed a weather punch as winter came on toward the end of the shoot in November and December.
"It was really cold, and that's an important thing to make the scenes look right," Kwapis says. "One of the more complicated things to create is visual breath. That was not a problem in Alaska. But Drew jumped right in."
Despite the conditions, Barrymore was pleased to work with three animatronic whales, created by the same New Zealand special-effects company that worked on 2002's Whale Rider.
"I didn't want to be playing acting," she says. "I needed a whale." Even if the whales were robotic, they helped her cope with the famously shortened days that came on as winter hit.
"That was the harder part for me — the lack of daylight," Barrymore says. "I'm a sunshine junkie. It was different, I'll put it that way."
Even packing was a chore for the Southern California born-and-bred Barrymore, who recalls that she toted a Fisher-Price light-up globe, Sorel boots and Uggs to Anchorage. "I didn't have anything (else) to offer. I lived at the (outdoor store) REI once I got there. That was definitely helpful."
Barrymore found a kindred spirit in real-life Greenpeace activist Cindy Lowry, who was the basis of Barrymore's character. Lowry also had been unprepared when she first went to Alaska to aid the whale rescue. Says Barrymore: "I feel like that we had that in common."
The two spent time together, before and during the shoot, and other shared traits surfaced.
"Ken (Kwapis) told me that my character fights for the right things but sometimes goes the wrong away about it," Barrymore says. "And that is a lot like me."
Back to 1988
Lowry says watching Barrymore shoot a scene in which she pulls a bullhorn out at a meeting about oil drilling rights, which actually happened, made her see the similarities.
"I was just smiling and thinking 'That is so me,' " Lowry says. "She just totally got me."
Barrymore's self-imposed Internet and e-mail ban meant she couldn't conduct business for her busy production company, which produced the highly successful Charlie's Angels films and the less-successful rebooted TV version on ABC in 2011.
"I shut down," she says. "I said, 'The work can wait.' I did it right up to the moment I left and said I would get back to it when I got back."
That disconnect helped her keep the feel of 1988 as she conducted letter-writing campaigns with friends using a period-appropriate IBM Selectric typewriter. ("Every week there were letters back, too," she says. "I loved it.") She immersed herself in books, including Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, and indulged in a simple life.
"I went to work, did my hot yoga, and then I read. It was all very Zen."
Still, there were lighter moments. Actors Ted Danson, Kristen Bell and John Krasinski, who plays Barrymore's TV reporter ex-boyfriend, had an entire floor of Anchorage's Captain Cook Hotel to themselves. Krasinki's red fox Labrador, Finn, and Barrymore's mutt, Douglas, were able to roam about at will.
At times, Krasinski and his visiting wife, actress Emily Blunt, would pull Barrymore out to a local restaurant away from her books. "It was like, 'Come on, you're going out to dinner with us,' " Barrymore says. The big dinners had an added benefit of keeping the body nourished in the Alaskan cold.
"You really do need more calories to exist in Alaska," Lowry says. "People who live there get used to the dry cold. But folks visiting need to acclimate."
Barrymore might have taken the advice too seriously with a pad thai dish at a local Thai place.
"I definitely did put on a layer of 5 to 8 pounds of protective blubber. You just couldn't tell under all of those clothes," she says. "When I got home to Los Angeles, I was like, 'Wow, Alaska. I really brought it home with me.' "
Despite returning to the bustle of the filmmaking capital, Barrymore maintains the low-key attitude about her life. With the future wide open, she's at peace with not having every step of the way planned — even her usually packed professional calendar. The balance of emphasis has shifted to her personal life.
"It's all sort of in reverse now," she says with a laugh. "Now I am dating a few work things. But I just haven't committed."
Though she has found "the one" personally, she is willing to wait for her next professional soul mate.
"I really love being in love. I am that girl who will sit outside your house in a car at night. And I mean that in a sort of good-committed way, not a psycho-irritant," she laughs. "When I'm in love, I really commit myself to things, whether it's work or a person.
"So when I find that new work love, I'll stalk it."
Source: floridatoday
