SHE’S UNLUCKY IN LOVE
Opposites don’t attract — they fight. Drew Barrymore’s nearly four-year marriage was always doomed
Not even her acting ability could hide her pain. With a smile on her face, Drew Barrymore tried to pretend nothing was wrong as she poured glasses of Barrymore Wines’ newly released rosé at the Pebble Beach Food & Wine Festival in Carmel, Calif., on April 2. “She seemed distracted and distant,” says an eyewitness, noting that Drew stayed for only about 20 minutes. “She wasn’t acting like herself.”
For good reason. Just one day earlier, Drew, 41, announced that she and her husband, Will Kopelman, 38, were ending their marriage after nearly four years. And while the news stunned Hollywood, multiple sources tell In Touch that Drew dumped Will and their split had been years in the making. “Drew and Will had created this image that they were one big happy family, but it was all a pretense,” a family insider tells In Touch, revealing that the couple — who are parents to daughters Olive, 3, and Frankie, 23 months — have been living separate lives for more than a year. A turning point for Drew came in February 2015, when she turned 40. She took a trip to Hawaii and realized how unhappy she was. “Inside, she was crying,” says the family insider. “She felt like she wasn’t in control of her life anymore.” Things got worse quickly. “Drew began contacting her attorneys in the fall of 2015,” the family insider adds. “She tried to keep it together for as long as she could, but their relationship was broken beyond repair.” They were doomed from the start. “Part of the problem is that Drew and Will are total opposites. He’s very organized and used to keeping a schedule, and Drew’s flighty, always late and is truly a wild child at heart,” says the family insider. (A former troubled child star, Drew spent her preteen years drinking and clubbing. By 15, she had already been to rehab and was living on her own.) At first, Drew was drawn to Will precisely because they are opposites. “He [is] someone who has this incredible blueprint of a family that I don’t have,” she said after they married in June 2012. “He was someone who was always reachable on the phone.”
But their differences eventually got in the way. At an April 2015 event, an In Touch reporter watched as the couple bickered while their children played. “She really wanted the marriage to work and gave up so much for him,” the family insider says of the actress, who even put the brakes on her movie career right after getting married to focus on her personal life. “Because she came from a broken family, Drew tried so hard to play the devoted wife role. She desperately wanted that sense of family and stability, and for a while she thought she found that in Will.” But in 2014, she returned to the big screen with the Adam Sandler dud Blended. “At that point, she wanted to ramp up her career again and Will didn’t want her to,” says the family insider. “They fought bitterly about it.” Adds a source close to Drew, “There was no infidelity, nothing dramatic like that. This has been going on for a long time. They’ve been working on their issues. In the end, they feel like, ‘This is a bummer. We tried.’”
They remain on good terms. “They are still living together,” says the source close to Drew. “They have places in NYC and in LA. Both are in LA right now, living in the same house.” They have a prenup, so there won’t be a battle over their combined $135 million fortune. ( Will’s father, Arie Kopelman, is the former COO of Chanel.) Says the family insider, “They want Frankie and Olive to feel as little effect from their divorce as possible. Their daughters’ needs will forever come first.” ◼