Drew Barrymore "terrified" of "Grey Gardens" role

LOS ANGELES – She comes from a acclaimed Hollywood family, began acting as a kid and has formed with abounding top directors, but Drew Barrymore was never as abashed of a role as she was for her latest allotment in "Grey Gardens."

The television movie, which debuts on HBO on Saturday, stars the 34-year-old Barrymore as Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale, the aberrant accessory of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who lived a antisocial activity of abundance and extreme poverty afore her afterlife in 2002.

To booty on the role, Barrymore, who fabricated her name as the adolescent in "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" in 1982, had to age herself with architecture and apparel from a college-age amateur to an aged woman, and she had to adept the emphasis of aristocratic New York society. She says she had to attack for the role, which alone added to the emphasis back it came time to perform.

"This had a claiming in every freakin' corner, it was terrifying," Barrymore told Reuters. "But I aloof fell in adulation with her, who she was and who she became."

Beale and her mother Edith "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale, were associates of New York City society, but afterwards her father, Phelan Beale, alone the ancestors in the aboriginal canicule of the Great Depression, they boring began to abatement on adamantine times.

Mother and babe took up abode in their sprawling manor, Grey Gardens, on Long Island, New York and as the years went by they lived on a abate allowance from Phelan Beale.

The abode fell into disrepair, and was beat by bodies and rodents. It became such a nuisances that bounded admiral threatened to batter the abode until Jackie O stepped-in to aid her accessory and aunt.

Documentary makers Albert and David Maysles ventured out to Long Island in the aboriginal 1970s and fabricated a documentary cine about the Beales alleged "Grey Gardens."

NOTHING LITTLE ABOUT EDIE

Over the years, it developed a band afterward and "Little Edie" mushroomed into a charlatan of sorts because, admitting her odd and antisocial life, she maintained a faculty of appearance that had her singing in nightclubs afterwards her mother died.

"She is a absolutely alluring person," Barrymore said. "She's tortured. She's on an affecting alter all the time -- one minute she's blessed and dancing about and entertaining, and the abutting minute, she's abounding of anguish and heartache."

Among the challenges, Barrymore said, was adopting the emphasis of a New York association woman. She formed with a articulation drillmaster for one year to absolute the tones and language.

To ability middle-age years and above -- accomplish her anatomy attending both attenuate and blubbery -- Barrymore sat in architecture chairs from four to six hours at a amplitude and acclimated 13 prosthetic devices. She said she became a bit of a anchoress herself, acid ties with accompany while she wore the face and clothes of "Little Edie."

"I was so abounding with fear," the "Charlie's Angels" brilliant said. "I couldn't eat or action and acquainted I was absolutely accident my mind," she said.

But anticipation by aboriginal reviews, her assignment seems to accept paid off. Rolling Stones analyzer Peter Travers said, "the calligraphy hits a few bumps, but Jessica Lange (who plays "Big Edie") and Drew Barrymore are arresting as the bizarro Beales."

Instead of demography a breach afterwards such a arduous role, Barrymore began absorption on one of her activity goals, directing. She makes her admission as a filmmaker this abatement with the ball "Whip It!," about the activity of a roller derby queen.

"These two pieces were actual agnate in that they were both about extreme, activist discipline. Both projects alleged for that from me, so I was aflame to do new challenges and booty on altered fears," she said.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant)