She comes from a famous Hollywood family, began acting as a kid and has worked with many top directors, but Drew Barrymore was never as terrified of a role as she was for her latest part 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 eccentric cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who lived a reclusive life of wealth and extreme poverty before her death in 2002.

To take on the role, Barrymore, who made her name as the child in “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” in 1982, had to age herself with makeup and costumes from a college-age ingenue to an elderly woman, and she had to master the accent of upper-crust New York society. She says she had to campaign for the role, which only added to the stress when it came time to perform.

“This had a challenge in every freakin’ corner, it was terrifying,” Barrymore told Reuters. “But I just fell in love with her, who she was and who she became.”

More at Reuters

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