Drew Barrymore and Demi Lovato reflect on being given 'substances' as children: 'It's unfathomable'

Demi Lovato and Drew Barrymore went through more as child stars than most deal with over the course of a lifetime. Now they're commiserating over their troubling early experiences with drugs and alcohol.

"It's hard to say that you don't blame other people when other people may have been giving you substances as a kid," Lovato, who uses she/they pronouns, reasoned in the new documentary Child Star, which she co-directed with Nicola Marsh. "How old were you when you were first given something?" she asked the E.T. star.

Barrymore, who got her first acting job at 11 months old, replied, "I used to get high with my mom's friend at like 10. And I thought she was so cool, and she would give weed to me and her son."

"It's hard to not blame someone else when you're ten years old," Lovato said. Though when Barrymore reflected on these dangerous and unusual aspects of her childhood, she noted, "Those were all my actions, those were my reactions. That was my coping mechanism. I'm very accountable, I don't blame other people." The talk show host also said having children changed her perspective on her own adolescence.

"Having a 10 year old daughter now, I just, it's unfathomable. But that's just how I grew up," Barrymore said.

Child Star is the fourth documentary feature Lovato has starred in chronicling her turbulent childhood and life-or-death struggle to break free from addiction and the ravages of an eating disorder. But where Demi Lovato: Stay Strong (2012), Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated (2017) and Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil (2021) focused exclusively on Lovato, Child Star expands the frame to look at the conditions which put child actors in such precarious, easily-exploited positions.

In addition to Barrymore, Gen X's ultimate child star, Lovato conducts conversations with Christina Ricci, Kenan Thompson, and a crop of child prodigies from the generations that followed, including Alyson Stoner, Jojo Siwa, and Raven-Symoné. Disturbingly, most who were interviewed testified to being exposed to illicit substances by adults at some point during their childhoods.

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Ricci said she "immediately went right to drugs and alcohol in my teens," after landing her first screen role in 1990's Mermaids at only 10. "I don't remember feeling like there was any other way to be happy," she recalled.

"I knew I couldn't show that I was drinking even though I was. It just made me rebel even more," Stoner recalled. Lovato added, "Finding drugs was easy. That was the only way I knew how to escape."

Lovato has been remarkably candid about the struggles against drug and alcohol addiction they endured after skyrocketing to Disney fame on series like Sonny With a Chance and films like Camp Rock. Whether it's the challenge of sobriety or the horrors of overdose, Lovato has arisen as a champion of former child actors and anyone trying to break the cycle of addiction.

Barrymore has been equally candid about her fight against substance dependencies that were created when she was too young to meaningfully consent to anything being given to her. Barrymore has called herself a "walking cautionary tale," admitting to an alcohol addiction at only 13 years old. Now sober, she sees her fight to stop drinking as "one of the most honoring things I can do to the Barrymore name because we have all been such hedonists," she said of her famous family of actors.

Barrymore's grandfather John died from complications related to alcohol abuse, and her Aunt Diana and father John Drew both had histories of alcoholism.

In the documentary, Stoner explained that "there's actually research there that shows people who experience fame have an average lifespan that's 14 years younger than non-famous people" due to the higher occurance rate of both substance abuse and mental health struggles. "If that's the case," Stoner asked, "why are we hooking a child to a drug that's fundamentally altering their brain chemistry and future development?"

Child Star ultimately tries to uplift more than the addiction and survival stories bring the mood down. It concludes with Lovato speaking to several young performers and members of the Looking Ahead program, which aims to lobby for more legal protections for child actors.

"Obviously you want to make a great film, TV show or commercial," Lovato told them. "But what matters is your well-being and the other things in your life, like family and friends. That's what really matters."