Meet GLAMOUR's January digital cover star, Drew Barrymore. "I’ve never tried plastic surgery… it's a very slippery slope”:

Drew Barrymore, the woman who stole my heart aged seven, as I sat on my dad’s knee in the cinema watching E.T., walks into her hotel room and gives me a big hug. She’s wearing a green silk Zara kimono jacket and a vintage Mickey Mouse T-shirt. I am slightly taken aback by her normality. 

Seeing an icon in the flesh, one whom I’ve girl-crushed on since childhood, is surreal. She should, given her Hollywood pedigree, be giving Mariah a run for her money in

the diva stakes.

But there are no demands, no entourage. And no sanitised, PRd-to-within-an-inch-of-their-lives soundbites. She's in the UK to promote her beauty brand, Flower Beauty. In fact, five minutes in, and we’re talking heroin and plastic surgery.

“I have an extremely addictive personality,” says Drew, openly. “I’ve never done heroin,” she comments, referring to her misspent youth, “and I don’t want to get plastic surgery because I feel like they’re both very slippery slopes. I feel if I try either, I’m going to be dead really soon.”

It’s why she feels very strongly about ageing naturally. “Not messing with my face or chasing some unnatural beauty is a standard I live by. I have dark circles under my eyes. I was at my dermatologist’s recently who said to me, ‘Can I shoot some Juvederm up there? It will raise the skin and it won’t be so sunken, which is causing the darkness to look worse, because it’s lower than the natural light that is hitting it.’ And I went: ‘No, but I’m gonna go home and start highlighting under my eyes, so thank you for the tip!”  

It’s this refreshing, no-BS approach that has led to her to becoming a genuine, modern role model, appealing to women of all ages. Often, when actresses say they don’t have plastic surgery, what they really mean is they don’t go ‘under the knife’ – but that excludes injectables. I look more closely at Drew’s face and I can assure you it’s as real as her attitude. Her under-eyes and forehead have the natural fine lines you’d expect of a 43-year-old mother of two. Everything moves and she is beautiful. It’s unusual for a Hollywood star of her status to be so, well, au natural.

“It shouldn’t be,” she says, shaking her head. “We’ve gone far too far with the whole thing, especially when people who are so young are doing it.” She’s always felt this way, more so now she’s a mother.“I feel ageing is a privilege. It’s about how to do it gracefully, with humour, self-love and a respect for the process, and that’s always been really important to me. Then I started having girls and I thought, thank god these were my initial instincts. Now I can carry them out in an even more deep and profound way.”

Instead of surgery, she swears by a ‘Clear + Brilliant’ laser treatment with NYC-based dermatologist Dr Roy G. Geronemus.

“He’s the best,” she assures me. “[The treatment] just schluffs the barnacles of brown and sun damage off your face. It’s the greatest thing ever. It’s non-invasive and there’s no downtime. It’s like microdermabrasion laser, but it always makes me feel so much more attractive.”

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