Drew Barrymore's godfather, Steven Spielberg, tried to impart some wisdom on her as a seven-year-old at the end of shooting E.T., but no matter what advice he gave, she still had a long journey to becoming the famous actress we know today. Her transformation from a child star to a credible actress may have been a long process, but she got there in the end somewhat unscathed.
One thing that didn't come out of her troubled past unscathed was her love life. Similar to actresses like Scarlett Johansson, Barrymore has been married three times in such a short amount of time.
Her marriage to her first husband, Jeremy Thomas, lasted a staggering two months. Two more failed marriages later, and Barrymore won't even date anymore. But what is the L.A. bar owner doing now?
They Were Married For 19 Days
Barrymore had an interesting childhood, to say the least. By the time she was starring in E.T. her mother was encouraging her to have a typical celebrity life, attending parties, even though she was not yet 10. She was accompanying her mother to nightclubs and eventually turned to drugs and alcohol, becoming addicted when she was 13.
Unfortunately, these addictions lead to a failed suicide attempt that got her mother's attention. Barrymore was sent to a mental health institution shortly after, and a year and a half later, she was recovering.
After leaving rehab, Barrymore realized that she had to "divorce her mother," to start her new life off on better footing. At the age of 14, Barrymore succeeded in earning her emancipation from her mother.
Barrymore told The Guardian, "my mom and I hugged, knowing things would be different, but things were always just too different, and that was why this needed to happen."
It took three years after that for Barrymore to gain momentum in her career once again. "To have such a big career at such a young age, then nothing for years — people going, you're an unemployable disaster — that's a tough trip to have by the time you're 14," Barrymore said.
After she did films like Poison Ivy and flashed David Letterman on live television, she learned that she didn't want to exploit herself like that again. So she started taking more modest parts.
Even though she was cleaning up her life, getting sober, and making a stand against her mother and the industry, Barrymore made another mistake when she married Thomas.
She was only 19 when she married the 31-year-old British bar owner in 1994, and their marriage only lasted nineteen days. They allegedly met at his Los Angeles bar, The Room, where Barrymore was a loyal customer, and they began dating. Six weeks later they decided to tie the knot.
The decision came about at 4 a.m. one night while the pair were attending a friend's party. According to one of Thomas's friends, someone at the party kidded that Barrymore and Thomas looked so in love they should just marry each other already.
Thomas somehow managed to secure a minister at that late hour (he apparently paid $20 extra for the short notice) and then all of a sudden they were married an hour and a half later, with a pit bull as the maid of honor. Barrymore borrowed a silk slip dress and wore combat boots, and they married on Thomas' rooftop bar at The Room.
Thomas told Radar Online, that he married Barrymore "because she was cute." But Barrymore instantly recognized her mistake the moment it happened. "I realized my mistake on the day I married him," she said.
The very next day Barrymore flew to Arizona to film Boys on the Side. Thomas told her he wanted to talk every day because they were married now.
"Drew would tell me how much she missed me and loved me. On one of her breaks, we checked into a suite at a luxury hotel and everything was perfect," Thomas told Radar Online.
They planned to honeymoon in Hawaii but apparently, Barrymore woke up from the fantasy she was living and decided to go alone. She called Thomas from the hotel room, breaking it off.
"I got a phone call from her — in Hawaii! She’d gone off on our honeymoon without me," Thomas said.
Not long after, Barrymore filed for divorce and claimed Thomas only married her for money and a green card.
Looking back, Thomas said, "She was probably a little bit underage when she first started coming to the bar. But she just fit in with everyone. She was a fun young girl and she’d come in with her friends. We led two completely different lifestyles."
Where Is Thomas Today?
While we didn't know much about Thomas when he was married to Barrymore, we know even less about him now. Most accounts say he is a Welsh-born bar owner who had a bar in Los Angeles, but publications like Vanity Fair say he is a producer.
There is a Jeremy Thomas, who is British and a producer, but he's 71 years old, so there must have been a mix up there somewhere.
Thomas has virtually disappeared, other than his interview with Radar Online in 2018. There is still a club in Hollywood that goes by the name of The Room, but whether or not it's still in Thomas's possession is unknown. Maybe he went back to Britain?
His and Barrymore's marriage had its 15 seconds of fame and then it was snuffed out and almost unwritten in Barrymore's life. It's like he didn't even exist. Barrymore probably doesn't even remember him and likes to keep it that way.