This Is How Drew Barrymore Saved Her Bleach-Fried Hair

There are a lot of reasons to love Drew Barrymore: The A-lister is also an affordable-wine aficionado, killer comedic actress, and by all accounts a truly wonderful human being. But the thing about Drew that endears us to her most of all is that the woman nerds out about beauty just as much as we do. What other star reveals the contents of their bathroom cabinet on Instagram just for kicks? Or creates her own #beautyjunkieweek to share her personal beauty highs and lows?

Thanks to the latter, we’re learning that Drew is more like us than we even thought. This week alone, she’s shared that it takes a ridiculous array of eye creams to go up against dark circles (and maybe not even win). And in a pair of particularly revelatory posts, she showed that even Hollywood royalty gets sidelined by damaged hair.

“A few months ago I lightened my hair and it just looked dead! I was sad. Don’t i look sad? This picture is sad! I wanted to do something to feel more attractive to myself and it totally backfired,” she confessed in an Instagram post today, showing how unfavourably her hair responded to bleach. Been there.

Of course, do-it-all Drew doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who easily accepts defeat. And sure enough, in the next post shared, she explains exactly how — with a little help from longtime colourist Tracey Cunningham — she nursed her hair back from the brink. Her fix? Olaplex, the in-salon and at-home treatment that promises to repair the hair’s broken bonds that are created by colouring.

After three weeks of applying the treatment on clean, wet hair for 20 minutes at a time, Barrymore shows a pretty triumphant return, with her once-taxed hair suddenly regaining its wavy texture. “So quickly my hair is remarkably and clearly better,” she marvels. “It’s curling and actually bouncing and looking like hair rather than coughed up bird feathers.”

For those of us who don’t have access to problem-solvers like Cunningham, the post serves as both a revelation and important reminder: Whether a wonky day at the salon stands in the way of happy hair, or life is trying to get you down, never underestimate the power of a killer comeback. Or Olaplex.