Few people are born with such an obvious karmic mixed bag as Drew Barrymore. Though she's only 23, her checkered history is now something of a modern fairy tale: Inheriting the acting gifts of her Barrymore predecessors as well as their capacity for self-destructiveness, Drew starred in E.T., one of the most successful films of all time, at age 6 ... and found herself in drug rehab at 13. Bouncing back from a precocious addiction to alcohol and cocaine, Drew slowly found her way back into the spotlight, graduating from skanky B-movie fare like Poison Ivy and TV's The Amy Fisher Story to meatier film roles. Now a lauded leading lady and, by all appearances, a content and grounded young woman who fairly bubbes over with enthusiasm for life, Drew has gone from rehab to Cinderella, and from Playboy model to role model. What prevented Drew from yielding to the dark side of her Barrymore heritage and ending up on the trash heap of burned-out, washed-up child stars? A look at her astrological chart provides an interesting perspective on the unpredictable bundle of gifts, weaknesses, and unique quirks that make up Drew Barrymore.

Throughout Drew's chart we see a tension between her creative, spiritual, and ethereal side, and her disciplined, ambitious side -- both of which, obviously, contributed to her success as an actress. Her Pisces creativity, combined with the ambition of her 10th-house planets and the free-spirited originality of her Mercury in Aquarius, combine to make Drew a powerful, talented presence with an undeniable spark that sets her apart from the crowd. But Pisces is known as (among other things) the sign of self-undoing, and the great gifts Drew inherited from her Barrymore ancestors have a dark side -- the addictive personality known as "the curse of the Barrymores."

Drew was born under the sign of Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac. Pisces natives are known as "old souls," possessing a wisdom beyond their years -- but also taking the world's burdens onto their shoulders. They're frequently gifted with tremendously heightened sensitivity; their powers of perception can verge on the psychic. Their strengths lie in creativity and imagination, but their grip on matter-of-fact reality can be tenuous. Pisces natives have a natural affinity with the world of dreams and extrasensory experience ("I'm definitely one of those cosmic, out-in-the-ether chickie dudes," Drew told Mademoiselle), but their tendency toward escapism -- and their empathic urge to internalize the emotions of those around them -- can turn self-destructive. Depression, self-destructive behavior, and especially addiction, are often associated with the Pisces archetype. (For an astrological case study of a Pisces who, unlike Drew, was unable to conquer his own demons, see our analysis of Kurt Cobain's chart.)

Obviously, not all Pisces natives turn to drugs and alcohol to numb their intense sensitivity. But Drew may have had a particularly difficult time defining her own identity, relying too heavily on outside approval. Along with her Sun, representing ego-expression, Drew's Venus and Jupiter are conjunct in Pisces in the 10th house of career and status. Venus rules affections and relationships as well as one's sensual appetites, and when it is next to Jupiter, the planet of expansion and growth, it signifies a strong tendency toward overindulgence. In Pisces, this tendency can often mean alcohol and drug addiction, as well as a propensity toward dependent, self-destructive relationships. At the same time, of course, a Sun-Venus-Jupiter stellium in the 10th house can signify great professional success and even fame, and Drew's certainly illustrates her precocious career accomplishments as well as her Capricornian quality of being wise beyond her years. Capricorns, or those with strong Capricorn elements in their charts (Cap rules the 10th house), are sometimes said to be born old, and Drew certainly grew up way too fast. Yet, with all her Pisces planets, she simultaneously hung onto a childlike vulnerability and need for approval. Confused? Well, so was young Drew.

As a little girl, Drew was a regular at trendy Hollywood parties. People with strong Capricorn/10th-house chart influences are often said to be "born old."

In her autobiography, Little Girl Lost, Drew decribes feeling totally unloved and unwanted as a child; while acting gave her the sense of public approval (10th house) she craved, and provided a positive release for her Piscean creativity and empathizing ability, it never assuaged her deep-seated feelings of insecurity. Drew recalls how, at 11, her drinking, smoking, and toking were "all part of desperately wanting to be liked and respected by friends." Without her newly acquired habits, the older crowd she hung with might have "seen me as the dopey eleven-year-old girl I was: one with not much of a figure, a wealth of insecurities, and low self-esteem. Not the fun-loving party girl I made myself out to be." With a Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Pisces in the 10th, typical adolescent issues of peer approval become vastly magnified; no matter how much she accomplished in the public (10th house) eye, Drew couldn't help but feel that this was not the 'real her' -- so she clung desperately to codependent relationships, and turned to her addictions to blot out the pain and insecurity she felt.

Why was it so difficult for Drew to believe in herself, to use her powerful 10th-house planets positively? Well, for one thing, Drew's Pisces Sun and Venus-Jupiter conjunction are intercepted in her 10th house, indicating a tendency to internalize the energy of those planets. In astrology, when we say a sign is "intercepted," it means that the sign does not appear on the cusp of any house in the chart, and so does not express easily in any realm of one's life. In Drew's case, Pisces is contained entirely in her 10th house. (The 10th house also represents the father, a point to which I will return shortly.) So although she possesses a tremendous gift for acting, her work -- and fame -- did not serve to gratify her ego needs; instead, she sought validation through the most self-defeating means possible.

Drew's playful, sometimes off-the-wall style hints at her free-spirited Aquarius Mercury.

There are other difficult aspects in Drew's chart which made it difficult for her to reconcile her sensitive side with her disciplined side. Drew's Saturn (symbolizing the father as well as career and status issues) also conjuncts her Moon, the planet that represents one's emotional life as well as the mother, in Cancer. Drew's alcoholic-addict father John was rarely around during Drew's childhood and was verbally and physically abusive when he did see his daughter. Drew was raised by her mother Jaid, an aspiring actress who gave up pursuing her own career to concentrate on Drew's. The Moon/Saturn conjunction, opposing Drew's driven, ambitious Capricorn Mars, suggests the confusion inherent in the chaotic mixture of the personal and professional in young Drew's life.

With the emotional Moon in nurturing Cancer next to businesslike Saturn, Drew's codependent closeness with her mother, in the absence of her abusive father, blurred with the demands of Drew's career. Drew harbored a lot of anger toward her mother for what she perceived as criticism and lack of support. In family counselling at rehab, Moon/Saturn issues crystallized as thirteen-year-old Drew screamed at her mother, "Why the hell don't you be just my mother instead of my manager?"

Drew's career provided her access to a Saturnian adult world that seemed light years away from her emotional (Moon) life as an insecure, love-starved child. Regularly accompanying Jaid to nightclubs, Drew discovered alcohol, a suitable conduit for her Pisces tendency to escapism. "When I felt pain, I medicated it," explains Drew, who quickly graduated from furtive sips of beer to getting wasted, then to pot and cocaine, in true Venus/Jupiter in Pisces fashion.

Drew's Neptune, the ruler of her Pisces planets, is awkwardly placed in her 6th house, inconjunct to her 2nd-house Saturn. Dreamy, deceptive Neptune in the Virgo-ruled sixth house of health and body can make for a distorted body image -- which Drew certainly had when she was younger. Saturn, signifying father or authority figures as well as career, is in its detriment (a weakened, uncomfortable position) in motherly, nurturing Cancer. Saturn can also represent what we lack, and Drew definitely felt a longing for the father she was lacking. Drew's Neptune (escapism), in her 6th house of health and physical habits, allowed her to escape her sense of worthlessness by numbing herself through drugs and alcohol, or "self-medication." Playing dress-up in trendy outfits at the nightclubs of New York an L.A., partying with movie stars and rock stars, Drew could temporarily forget the father who "made me feel like a useless piece of garbage."

Posing for Playboy showed off Drew's Neptunian mystique.

Just as troubled relationships with male authority figures are a common theme for young women with eating disorders, Saturn in Cancer can signify feelings of abandonment or absent-father issues as well as struggles with one's (female) body image (Cancer rules the breasts, stomach, and womb.) Especially in the corporeal, materially oriented second house, this Saturn placement can create the kind of physical self-loathing Drew felt. When boys at school taunted her with names like "fat ass, pig, [and] fatso, and said my nose looked like Porky Pig's," the sensitive Pisces was "crushed, absolutely mortified." But, in an apt manifestation of Saturn in Cancer, Drew didn't fight back; "from day one, my dad had made me feel like such an unworthy person that I accepted all these deprecating remarks as if they were gospel."

By the start of 1990 -- the year Drew published Little Girl Lost as closure to a rehabilitation process that had been set back by one coke-fueled cross-country joyride -- Chiron was passing over Drew's Moon-Saturn conjunction in Cancer. Chiron, the apocryphal planet known as the "wounded healer," signifies not only where we feel pain or vulnerability but where we have the opportunity to heal others through our experience of that pain. (Drew's natal Chiron squares her Capricorn Mars, planet of drive and action.) Chiron's transit opened old wounds for Drew; in rehab, "everything I did was designed to get me in touch with my feelings, to confront myself," which Drew had "avoided for years." But in writing her book, Drew began to feel for the first time that she was not alone, that maybe she could help other kids who were like her -- the "healer" aspect of Chiron.

At the same time, addictive Neptune, ruler of Drew's Pisces planets, was entering her 8th house of change and transformation (at the time of Drew's last relapse on July 25, 1989, Neptune had retrograded back into Drew's 7th). The 8th house is a do-or-die kind of house in which deep-seated, intense issues come to the surface. While she had originally been dragged into rehab kicking and screaming, Drew was finally ready to accept that she had to work on healing her addiction, adjusting the patterns and habits that undermined her goals (the Saturn/ Neptune inconjunct). Neptune may rule addiction, but it also rules the fantasy world of the movies, and Drew's treatment helped her learn that acting, not drugs, was what really made her happy and fulfilled.

Today, using her mutable Pisces planets, and her chameleon-like Gemini Ascendant, Drew transforms into characters onscreen -- and draws her self-worth (2nd house) from her talent (Neptune and Pisces) and hard work (Saturn and the 10th house). She's also reconnected with her long-absent father, moving him into her L.A. house -- a few years after the disappeared Barrymore first resurfaced as a drifter. With Drew's natal retrograde Saturn now direct in her progressed chart, relations with her father have become positive enough that the man who once made her feel worthless now says, "Don't you realize the light you carry?" For Drew, this affirmation is "the greatest thing I've ever heard."

Like Drew, John Barrymore Jr. also has a Saturn/Neptune inconjunct in his chart, signifying that he had to grapple with a similar conflict between discipline and the urge toward addiction. With Scorpio rising and a Sun-Moon-Mercury stellium in the 8th house -- natural home of Scorpio -- plus a Venus-Pluto conjunction in Cancer sextiling a Mars-Chiron conjunction in Taurus, John Jr. has some powerful currents of Scorpionic intensity in his chart, a near-violent passion that may manifest in self-destructiveness. Like Drew, he has an airy/watery chart (his 8th-house stellium is in Gemini) which may have gifted him with creativity. But the dark, destructive bent of his Pluto/Scorpio influence, combined with the instability of his Gemini planets, made for a wildly unstable human being who couldn't resist the lure of drugs and drinking. Although as a father he was absent at best, abusive at worst, he was lucky enough to have a compassionate Pisces daughter who has forgiven him enough to accept him. (Venus-in-Pisces natives tend to be very self-sacrificing in relationships.)

Pisces, the fish, is the last sign of the zodiac, the sign where the individualistic Aries "I" dissolves into the greater oneness of the oceanic cosmos. Small wonder, then, that Drew has not used her 10th-house planets to claw her way to the top like the average Capricornian cutthroat. She says "Hollywood is my soul-calling," and uses an astrologically apt metaphor to describe her modus operandi with her usual Mercury-in-Aquarius whimsy: "People think you have to be a shark to survive Hollywood, but that's just not true. I think you should be the ocean the sharks swim in, if anything -- or at least reside in a pretty coral apartment and do your own thing." [Mademoiselle, February 1998, pp. 141-2]

Drew has come a long way from the girl who, while in rehab, pronounced herself "fat and ugly" and declared that "I hate myself.... nobody likes me." Her treatment tackled not only her substance abuse issues but the host of self-esteem problems that made Drew turn to drugs. As she grew up in the public eye, Drew gained a reputation for not only possessing confidence in her body but flaunting her sexuality. In January 1995, the month Drew was Playboy's cover girl(and soon made headlines for spontaneous breast-baring at nightclubs and on David Letterman), Neptune (fantasies) was passing over Drew's natal Mars (sex drive) in Capricorn. At the same time, transiting Mars opposed Drew's Sun, which natally trines her spontaneous, unpredictable Uranus in sexual Scorpio in the fifth house of self-expression. Drew's Uranus placement gives her a bit of a wild streak in terms of expressing her sexuality. Today, while she has chilled out on the exhibitionism, she retains a positive body image and radiates confidence that befits her current status as A-list young actress. With Drew making films such as the kiddie-friendly Cinderella story Ever After, it seems clear that Drew's career has remained relatively unscathed by her "wild child" image. The elusive Neptunian with the canny 10th-house stellium and the mutable Gemini Ascendant observes that "it's fulfilling to constantly reinvent yourself -- not just for yourself but for your career."

Beginning students in astrology often ask whether certain chart placements are "good" and "bad," and the answer is always that there is no good or bad in astrology -- there's only positive or negative use of one's chart. Drew Barrymore's life story is one of a person forced to confront her own weaknesses and self-destructive habits at an age when most of us are still years away from becoming self-aware. Her chart is a study in the ability to integrate the different forces in one's personality, to take weaknesses and turn them into strengths by owning and accepting them.

Drew has said that if you have to go through hell, hopefully you should at least learn something from the experience. Using her Pisces gifts to full potential, Drew has certainly demonstrated the ability to learn and grow from mistakes, rather than falling back into self-pitying, self-destructive ruts. If her story has a "lesson," it's that everyone is born with qualities that are both gift and curse. Only by accepting your own contradictions and being true to yourself can you hope to learn from your own mistakes, grow, and move on.