Boys on the Side (1995) was a critical and commercial step forward. Everybody Says I Love You (1996), Woody Allen’s musical comedy, demonstrated a kind of versatile charm that the darker films of her recent past had not given audiences a chance to see. And then, in 1996, she appeared at the beginning of Wes Craven’s Scream and was murdered in the first twelve minutes, and somehow that was enough to remind everyone watching of something essential: that Drew Barrymore could hold a screen.
She had wanted the lead role in Scream. She has discussed this publicly — that she had pursued the Sidney Prescott role, that scheduling conflicts or other factors led instead to her taking the Casey Becker role, the character who dies almost immediately. But the role she played was, arguably, more memorable for being so brief. The sequence has become iconic. And Drew Barrymore’s presence in it — her ability to convey terror and desperation and humanity in a very short space — served as a kind of announcement that the actress who had charmed audiences as a seven-year-old was still present and still capable.
## The Comeback and What It Required
The late 1990s are, in retrospect, the period in which Drew Barrymore rebuilt her professional life through a combination of smart choices, good timing, and the kind of genuine talent that is difficult to suppress permanently.
The Wedding Singer (1998) was the film that changed the public’s understanding of what Drew Barrymore was in the contemporary entertainment landscape. Opposite Adam Sandler, in a romantic comedy set in the 1980s that leaned into its period details with enough affection to earn audience goodwill, she was funny, warm, and entirely credible as a person you would want to spend time with. Critics who had been tracking her career with varying degrees of skepticism responded to the film as a genuine surprise — not because it was unexpected that Drew Barrymore could be appealing, but because the packaging was so perfectly suited to what she actually brought to it.