Drew Barrymore has a four-karat ring — and an expanding career

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In this image released by Universal Pictures, Drew Barrymore is shown in a scene from "Big Miracle," a film about the rescue of a family of gray whales trapped by rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle. The film, which stars Barrymore and Ted Danson opens Feb. 3. (AP Photo/Universal Pictures, Darren Michaels)

Updated: March 5, 2012 8:03AM

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — An Alaskan adventure usually conjures up images of snowmobiles, bears and crashing glaciers. But Drew Barrymore’s three-month experience shooting “Big Miracle” was more like “Into the Zen” than Into the Wild.

“I’m a Cali girl through and through, but it was just nice to not be in the busy rush of Los Angeles,” says Barrymore of her stint in Anchorage, where she shunned Internet and emails in favor of letter-writing and reading. Shooting for the film (which opened Friday) took place in fall 2010, and it could not have come at a better time for the now 36-year-old actress who has been a pop-culture mainstay for three decades.

“There’s a book called Slowing Down to the Speed of Life, and there’s something about that title that totally rang true about this experience,” Barrymore says. “It’s hard to check out of your life for three solid months. It’s even harder when you get older. But I really did dive in.”

Perhaps “dive out” would be a better term. In “Big Miracle,” a fictionalized retelling of the 1988 effort to rescue three gray whales trapped by ice near the Arctic Circle, Barrymore plays a Greenpeace activist. It is her first big-screen acting project in two years and will likely be her last for a while.

That’s all just fine, she says. Barrymore is in no rush to find a new venture and is more content to focus on her personal life, which includes her new fiance, art consultant Will Kopelman.

“I’ve done all of this for 35 years,” Barrymore says of her career. “I think maybe it’s OK to put the life first for a minute. I don’t really know this feeling. It’s new and exciting.”

After all, Barrymore began her entertainment career at age 11 months, when she appeared in a dog food commercial. Since finding child stardom in “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982), she had a famously turbulent adolescence that eventually made way for an adult career that saw her move to rom-com queen (“The Wedding Singer” and “50 First Dates”). She also is a producer, director and lately, professional photographer.

While chatting at her Flower Films office, Barrymore buzzes from just viewing a photo spread she shot for the fashion glossy V featuring some her favorite rock bands in a house party theme. A few minutes earlier, the entire office had erupted in cheers after seeing the photos in the magazine’s current music issue.

“We just opened the magazine,” she says. “You kind of don’t believe it’s going to happen until you see it, and then it’s real.”

Even more real is the effect of two new pieces of jewelry on what she calls her “everyday outfit” of blue jeans, worn boots and casual gray sweatshirt. The first is a two-heart pendant around her neck held together by a gold safety pin, a gift from Kopelman.

“These are these wonderful hearts my man has given me, but the chain broke so I put it on the safety pin,” she explains.

The second is the four-carat, radiant-cut diamond engagement ring Kopelman presented to her when he proposed in December, after the two had been dating for nearly a year. “I am trying to get used to it,” Barrymore says, beaming. (Previously she had been linked romantically to stars such as Justin Long and Luke Wilson, and was married twice, most recently to actor Tom Green, whom she divorced in 2002.)

When she took on “Miracle” in 2010, she had yet to meet Kopelman, and the biggest adjustment she was making was to a different kind of ice. Instead of shooting the film on a soundstage, director Ken Kwapis informed his star that the production would be filmed entirely in Alaska.

Kwapis reconstructed the ice fields in Anchorage and filmed there, rather than in Barrow, which is much closer to the Arctic Circle. But the surroundings still packed a weather punch as winter came on toward the end of the shoot in November and December.

“It was really cold, and that’s an important thing to make the scenes look right,” Kwapis says. “One of the more complicated things to create is visual breath. That was not a problem in Alaska. But Drew jumped right in.”

Despite the conditions, Barrymore was pleased to work with three animatronic whales, created by the same New Zealand special-effects company that worked on “Whale Rider” (2002).

“I didn’t want to be playing acting,” she says. “I needed a whale.”

Even if the whales were robotic, they helped her cope with the famously shortened days that came on as winter hit. “That was the harder part for me, the lack of daylight,” says Barrymore. “I’m a sunshine junkie. It was different, I’ll put it that way.”

Barrymore’s self-imposed Internet and e-mail ban meant she couldn’t conduct business for her busy production company, which produced the highly successful Charlie’s Angels films and the less-successful rebooted TV version on ABC in 2011.

“I shut down,” she says. “I said the work can wait. I did it right up to the moment I left and said I would get back to it when I got back.”

That disconnect helped her keep the feel of 1988, as she conducted letter-writing campaigns with friends using a period-appropriate IBM Selectric typewriter. (“Every week there were letters back, too,” she says. “I loved it.”) She immersed herself in books, including Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, and indulged in a simple life.

Despite returning to the bustle of the filmmaking capital, Barrymore maintains the low-key attitude about her lifestyle. “It’s all sort of in reverse,” she says, laughing. “Now I am ‘dating’ a few work things. But I just haven’t committed.”

While she has found “the one” personally, she is willing to wait for her next professional soul mate.

“I really love being in love. I am that girl who will sit outside your house in a car at night,” she says. “And I mean that in a sort of good-committed way, not a psycho-irritant. When I’m in love, I really commit myself to things, whether it’s work or a person.

“So when I find that new work love,” she adds. “I’ll stalk it.”

Gannett News Service