Drew Barrymore, who became a star as a child artiste in Steven Spielberg's 1982 global sci-fi hit E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and has courted success as an actor, producer, director, and model over the decades, says she is less worried about her appearance these days, after having children and turning 40.

The actor has daughters Olive, seven, and Frankie, five, with former husband Will Kopelman.

"Now I'm a mom and in my mid-forties, I have the hair I like — drama-free and more natural. It takes 30 minutes to do my base of greys. I only barely cover them, so that the follicles can still grab the light as it grows out. (Yes, your greys can double as highlights with the right tint!)," Barrymore wrote in The Sunday Times Style magazine.

She also shared that she was never afraid to take risks with fashion. "I have always experimented with style over my life too. I wasn't ever the classic girl. I remember at my 10th birthday party putting eyeshadow up to my temples. I always loved dressing in a way that made me feel like I was a billboard for joy."

"I just didn't suit that clean classic look. I felt much more myself in crazy make-up and being somewhere like a music festival where there were other like-minded dressers. Fashion for me wasn't about expensive clothes and looking put together, it was about how I put it together. Mixing and matching vintage with labels. Sneakers with pajama pants and a Dries Van Noten sweater. White eyeliner with a shiny wet maroon lip, with a feather in my hair," she added.

Barrymore also said that her seven-year-old daughter Olive is following her. "Olive's attitude to style is the same — though I have in no way encouraged or influenced this! She loves to change her hair — the bluer to pinker the better. She even alters her own clothes with scissors and safety pins."