Drew Barrymore Says One Thing She's Proudest of Is Breaking Her Family's Cycle of Alcohol Abuse (Exclusive)

Drew Barrymore was 11 months old when she got her first job in a commercial.

When she was 7, she captured America’s hearts as Gertie in E.T. She starred in dozens of movies after that, including Firestarter, Never Been Kissed, Ever After: A Cinderella Story and Charlie’s Angels, which she also produced. 

It’s a résumé you might expect from the heir to one of the most famous families in Hollywood — her father, grandfather and great-grandparents and great-aunt and uncle were all actors. 

But as she looked back at her career in honor of PEOPLE’s 50th anniversary (she has graced the cover 15 times), it wasn’t one film or TV show she was most proud of.

“I think, for me, stopping drinking is one of the most honoring things I can do to the Barrymore name because we have all been such hedonists,” says the talk-show host, now 49.

Her grandfather John Barrymore, a famous Shakespearean actor in the ’20s and ’30s, drank himself to death. Her Aunt Diana confessed to drug and alcohol use in her biography Too Much, Too Soon. And her father John Drew Barrymore had a history of alcoholism.

“Don't look to me as the pillar of health and wellness and having it all together,” she says. “It's just like, you know what? This didn't work for our family, and I'm going to stop it. I'm going to be the one to break the link in that chain and maybe my kids and their kids will be better off for it."

"We have to fight genetic follies that our families bring to us," adds the star.

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Barrymore shared with PEOPLE in 2022 that during a difficult time following her divorce she began to drink more. After beating addiction as a teenager, she recognized the warning signs.

"After the life I planned for my kids didn't work out — I almost think that was harder than the stuff [I went through] as a kid. It felt a lot more real because it wasn't just me. It was about these kids that I cared so much about,” she said.

“Then I probably cared so much that I was only giving to them and not taking care of myself. It was a messy, painful, excruciating walk-through-the-fire-and-come-back-to-life kind of trajectory.”

She spent time in therapy and quit drinking. "It was my kids that made me feel like it's game time," she said. And she poured herself into developing The Drew Barrymore Show, which was renewed for a fifth season in January. 

Barrymore has never felt pressured to be in the family business, as she calls it. But she has felt the pull: “Ever since I could remember and think and be a cognitive person — I would say somewhere around 3 years old — I felt this extraordinary responsibility when I would watch my family's movies to keep their name alive,” she says.

“I feel like it helps me make sense of why I feel so magnetized to doing work in the field of film and television. I feel like they've given me such a calmness to know why it is I have to do this thing. I've got it in my genes and my blood, and I've been lucky enough that this business would allow me to keep going.”

If the business of Hollywood is in her blood, her work ethic is all her own.

“No matter what I've gone through in my personal life, I have never brought it to work. I've never screwed a job over. I don't ever flake. I don't come unprepared. I give everything of myself to work. I'm a consummate professional with an infallible work ethic,” she says.

“And as much as I expect myself to be a better, stronger, wiser person, I also expect myself to show up for any professional endeavor, giving my all. I don't phone anything in.”

For more on our 50th Anniversary, check out our special digital issue, and pick up the latest copy of PEOPLE, on newsstands April 12.