John Drew Barrymore (June 4, 1932 – November 29, 2004) was an actor, one of a family of actors that included his father, John Barrymore, and his father's siblings, Lionel and Ethel.

John D. Barrymore was born in Beverly Hills, California. His mother was actress Dolores Costello, and he was the father of the actress Drew Barrymore. Dolores and his father divorced while he was an infant, and he claimed to have met his father only once. At age 13 John and his cousin Dirk Drew Barrymore enlisted in the Navy. Due to their physical appearance, the military did not discover until several weeks later that the boys were underage. John ran away at age 17 and signed a film contract. But he repeatedly abandoned leading roles and had no major film career of any kind until 1958, when he gave an acclaimed performance in Not as a Stranger. In the late 1960s he accepted a major guest role as Lazarus in the Star Trek episode "The Alternative Factor". He failed to show up and was replaced at the last minute by Robert Brown, resulting in SAG suspending him for six months. By this time he had been arrested for drugs, drunkenness, and spousal abuse numerous times. Suffering from the same problems which had destroyed his father, Barrymore became a derelict by the 1970s and had no close contact with his family. In 2003, his daughter, Drew Barrymore moved him near her home in spite of their own estrangement, and paid all his medical bills. He finally died in late 2004.

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to television.

External links

• John Drew Barrymore (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000857/) at the Internet Movie Database
• Obituary from CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/30/barrymore.obit.ap/index.html)

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