Drew Barrymore Shares Devastating Effect of Weight Comments at Age 10

Drew Barrymore is reflecting on a difficult time in her life. While looking back at old photos on the Jan. 14 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show , the E.T. actress remembered how she was criticized for her weight and her appearance when she was just a child. "This picture-it just breaks my heart,” Drew told guests Valerie Bertinelli and Ross Mathews . “I was 10 years old and I just was told by everybody, ‘You don’t look like you did in E.T. You’re too heavy. You’re not blonde enough. You’re not old enough. You’re too young. You’re not tall.’ And everybody just started getting involved in the way I looked." The 50-year-old explained that the constant critiques had been “going on for a few years at this point,” and she could see the distress in her eyes when she looked at the photos. “You don’t know yourself at 10,” Drew said. “What I am so relieved about now is that it’s four decades later, I’m 50-I’m 10 there-I do know what’s important now, and the look in my eyes is so clear.” 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. 1978 1979 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1989 1990 1991 1993 1993 1995 1996 1997 1999 2000...

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