Drew Barrymore Shares Devastating Effect of Weight Comments at Age 10

And the former child actress is grateful she decided to block out the noise as she got older, saying, “Real, true happiness is just this choice we make.”  

Drew acknowledged that oftentimes that choice for happiness is something “we fight for.”

“It is a battle and a beautiful, internal war that we fight on the front lines, day in and day out,” she shared, “to get to a place where we actually can say this sentence and believe it, which is: ‘I deserve happiness.’ That, if it takes you a long time to figure out, it’s OK. As long as we learn it at some point.”

The Charlie’s Angels alum also had a message for the young people watching her, telling them that if they felt pressured “to be a certain way, you are not alone.”

“I have been there with you, and it is not a comfortable feeling,” she continued. “Somehow, some way, on the other side of that is kind of adulthood, and a personal freedom, and a desire to stop pleasing everybody else and start realizing what it’s gonna take for you to feel good about yourself, no matter what you look like or feel like.”

In some ways, Drew is glad she got her “physical, spiritual identity crisis” over with and “out of the way early.” Still, she went through a similar experience again when she turned 40, noting that when that happens, “The person you have to rely on is yourself.”

“I didn’t know this then, and I can see it in her eyes,” she said in reference to the photo, “but I know it now: You don’t have to take it in. You have an absolute boundary that you can lay down.”

For a look back at Drew over the years, keep reading.