Last week, we got a glimpse of Drew Barrymore's oddly photoshopped Vogue cover, but thankfully she's looking more like herself inside the magazine. Lately the birthday girl is all about Justin Long who she says makes her cheeks hurt from smiling, but she's got more than that going on. She dishes on her latest role in Grey Gardens, her upcoming projects, and her unorthodox family. Here are highlights:

  • On her role in Grey Gardens: "Something about learning you can live without everything changes you. All my life, I've been waiting and waiting to become a woman, but I always felt like a little girl. Edie did, too. But I think she might have been the thing that made me finally become a woman. I thought for sure it would be a relationship with another human being, a love. Little did I know it would be a posthumous relationship with a woman named Edith Beale."
  • On her directorial debut Whip It!: "I have traveled the world for 32 years and voraciously studied literature, art, other cultures. I've been to the places, spent time with the people. I am the most avid music fan. . . Photography has been my secret hobby and passion for years now. I've been putting all that in a piggy bank, and I've been waiting to break it open and make something that is very personal and important to me ... I relate to what it's like to feel like your surroundings are dangerous to the development of who you need to be as an adult. One of the most important rules of filmmaking is tell your story, tell things that are personal to you, and I feel like I'm out of the gate with that one thing in my back pocket."

    • To see what Drew had to say about her past relationships and family, just read more

    • On her past relationships: "I have been such a cards-on-the-table, direct, confident person in my life, in my work, and with my friends, but when it comes to relationships, for some reason, I have not grown up to the speed I am elsewhere."
  • On her family: "I had my own little Yoda in the form of my family. Maybe they were crazy, but they were talented and they were interested and they were passionate about life, and they weren't afraid to live it to its fullest. Maybe that hurt them in some ways, and maybe they didn't understand family values as well as some other families, but they're still an interesting tribe, and I'm proud I come from that circus. When I was a kid, I used to look at the moon and think it was my grandfather. I always knew where he was ... I have no sense of traditionalism, but I'm learning it on my own, slowly but surely. I'll be the first Barrymore who will tell my children, 'I'm going to pick you up at three' and actually turn up."

We have a feeling that Drew is still the same fun-loving wild child at heart, but it sounds like she's starting to grow up a bit. Even if we don't always love to see her making out with Justin, she's still the role model we hope some of our favorite troubled starlets can take a cue from.

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