Drew Barrymore says her wild ''journey'' helped her be the mother she is today.

The 'Miss You Already' actress was addicted to alcohol from the age of nine and entered rehab for drug addiction aged 14, but at 40, the star has come to terms with her troubled youth and says it taught her how to be a ''wholesome'' mother to her daughters, two-year-old Olive and 18-month-old Frankie.

She said: ''I would never pretend that my life didn't exist in every increment and moment and situation that it did.

''But the pillars of appropriateness are so important to me now as someone who wants to be a good, wholesome mother to her daughters, that maybe this is the journey that it took to get me here.''

Despite being a child star - and godmother to Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain - the actress found herself penniless after she emancipated herself from her parents.

She said: ''I got my first apartment. I was like a legal adult. I'd separated from my mom and got out of an institution and started my life over again. And no, I didn't have two nickels to rub together.''

Nowadays, Drew - who married actor Will Kopelman in 2012 - thinks her life is much more ''quiet'' than before.

She told The Times newspaper: ''The past five years actually. I've just quieted my life down. I've made a lot of changes. I've made a lot of choices. And it's all been very conducive to having the kind of family that I want to have.''