Drew Barrymore has been a pop culture icon ever since she hit the scene as a precocious child star from a famous family, and she was a tabloid fixture in the ’80s and ’90s due to her hard-living ways and high-profile relationships. Barrymore was known as one of Hollywood’s reigning bad girls, and has been open about her battle with addiction, which first landed her in rehab when she was 13.
Over four decades after her adorable breakout role in E.T., Barrymore has gone through her share of ups and downs and proved her resiliency. Now almost 50 and the host of her own popular talk show, the Never Been Kissed star has been married three times and is a mom of two. Barrymore may currently be keeping her relationship status quiet, but her love life over the years has been anything but boring. Here’s a look back at Drew Barrymore’s relationships and husbands.
Teenage romances and first love
In 1989, when Barrymore was 14, she dated Stand by Me star Corey Feldman. The two ’80s teen stars met during the filming of the after-school special 15 and Getting Straight and stayed together for a year. In 2023, the former troubled teens had a sweet reunion on The Drew Barrymore Show.
After breaking up with Feldman in 1990, Barrymore briefly dated Balthazar Getty, an actor who, like her, came from an illustrious family.
At just 16, in 1991, Barrymore became engaged to Leland Hayward III, the grandson of talent agent and Broadway producer Leland Hayward. The pedigreed pair quickly broke it off, and she was then linked to David Arquette.
In 1992, Barrymore dated Corin Nemec, the star of the teen sitcom Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.
Later that year, she got engaged to Beverly Hills, 90210 actor Jamie Walters. They got tattoos of each other’s names, but called off the engagement by 1993.
Drew Barrymore’s quickie first marriage
After her two broken engagements, Barrymore tied the knot for the first time in 1994, at the tender age of 19. She married Jeremy Thomas, the 31-year-old owner of The Room, a bar in L.A., after dating for six weeks. The couple split up after just 19 days, but their divorce wasn’t officially finalized until 1995.
Looking back on her ill-fated union, Barrymore said, “I realized my mistake on the day I married him,” and claimed that Thomas, who was born in Wales, only married her to get a green card.
Drew Barrymore’s ’90s beaus
Barrymore was quick to date again after her first divorce, and in 1994 she became part of an alternative ’90s power couple when she began a relationship with Eric Erlandson, the guitarist of Courtney Love’s influential rock band Hole.
Barrymore met Erlandson when he checked to see if she was okay while she was throwing up outside of a club, and they crossed paths again when the actress accidentally knocked on the door of his hotel room and when she was filming the movie Mad Love. The third meeting was the charm, and the couple dated until 1996.
Dishing on her rock star beau in 1995, Barrymore said, “I love him so much. And I have a family now from Eric, too. He has such a huge, amazing family.”
Following her split from Erlandson, Barrymore dated actor Luke Wilson. The pair met while filming the movie Home Fries and dated from 1996 to 1998. Looking back on the relationship on The Drew Barrymore Show in 2022, she said, “It was an open relationship; we were young.”
Drew Barrymore’s surprising and short-lived second marriage
In 2000, Barrymore met edgy comedian Tom Green during the filming of Charlie’s Angels. They got married in 2001, but filed for divorce at the end of the year, and split for good in 2002. Their short marriage was tumultuous, as Green battled testicular cancer and the pair’s house caught on fire.
20 years after they met, Barrymore and Green reunited on The Drew Barrymore Show after not speaking for over a decade. The couple had a surprisingly charming reunion, with Barrymore saying, “I think the world of you. I celebrate you and I always have and I always will.”
Drew Barrymore’s BFs of the aughts
In the ’00s, Barrymore had a five-year relationship with Fabrizio Moretti, the drummer for the hipster-favorite band the Strokes. They began dating in 2002 after meeting at a music festival and split in 2007.
Barrymore called her partnership with Moretti, “One of the most, if not the most, important relationships I’ve had in my life,” and said, “We’re still very close.”
After her breakup, Barrymore was briefly rumored to be dating director Spike Jonze and Scrubs star Zach Braff.
In 2008, Barrymore began dating Justin Long, her costar in the rom-coms He’s Just Not That Into You and Going the Distance. They broke up in 2010, but like many of her exes, they reunited on The Drew Barrymore Show. During his 2022 appearance on the show, she said, “We had so much fun, but we were more hedonistic, more immature. We would get together, we would break up. There was chaos. It was hella fun.”
Drew Barrymore’s final marriage to date
Barrymore married her third husband, art consultant Will Kopelman, in 2012. They had their first child, Olive, that same year, and in 2014 they had another daughter, Frankie. Barrymore’s marriage to Kopelman lasted longer than her previous two marriages, but they divorced in 2016.
Barrymore admitted that she and Kopelman were “polar opposites,” but said that she admired him because “He was someone who was always reachable on the phone, someone who was a classy human being, someone who has this incredible blueprint of a family that I don’t have.”
Barrymore hasn’t gone public with any relationships since her divorce, and has been keeping busy as a working mom. While she welcomed the opportunity to take on a lower profile after so many tabloid-ready relationships, she said that seeing the romance between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce made her want to start dating again, and in 2023, she revealed that she’d been going out with someone she met on the exclusive dating app Raya for three years.
Barrymore has had countless dramas in her love life over the years, but she’s looked back fondly on many of her exes recently, and seems to be enjoying the shift to a more low-key relationship.
