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Happy Drew Year

Originally posted Thursday April 14, 2005 12:00 PM EDT

From left: Fallon, ESPN's Steve Levy and Barrymore at Boston's Fever Pitch premiere. Photo by: Darren McCollester / Getty

And a gooey one – still. At a recent Barrymore photo shoot, Moretti snuggles with her and showers her with compliments after a wardrobe change. "Ah, bellissimo!" he coos. "You're beautiful." She blushes and blows him a kiss. "If you think so, that's all that matters to me." Says Fallon: "Neither has any pretension about them. They're two cool dudes who totally enjoy each other."

Still, after her failed marriages and a string of busted relationships that include Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson, actor Luke Wilson and singer Jamie Walters, Barrymore has learned to proceed cautiously when discussing matters of the heart. "Sometimes you make mistakes," she told PEOPLE last year of her ill-fated romances, "and you have to just learn from them and move on."

Does she see herself growing old with Moretti? "That's a really personal question. Like I said, I love him." Who holds the remote at night? "You're assuming we sleep together." Well, do you? She cracks up.

But she does drop her guard momentarily, to deny tabloid reports that they are engaged. "That's exactly why I've become more private about this stuff," she says. "One week I read we're breaking up; the next I see we're engaged. Just know it's good."

Even when other things in Barrymore's life are at their worst. She leaned on Moretti last year as she tended to her terminally ill father, John, who died of multiple myeloma Nov. 29. "Thank God she had Fabrizio," says Fallon of Moretti, who flew to Toronto, where Barrymore was wrapping Fever Pitch, to comfort her after John died.

The loss was tough on Barrymore, who in her 1990 autobiography Little Girl Lost (co-authored by PEOPLE Assistant Managing Editor Todd Gold) bitterly recounted her father's role – or lack thereof – in her sometimes harrowing childhood. Following a long line of Barrymore actors (including grandfather John, great-aunt Ethel and great-uncle Lionel), Drew made her debut in a Puppy Chow commercial at 11 months, but her rise to stardom after 1982's E.T. was quickly followed by a downward spiral: drinking by 9, doing cocaine at 12 and emerging from rehab at 14 after multiple visits.

Throughout it all, her alcoholic father countered physical blows – Barrymore's first memory of her father is when he threw her, then 3, against a wall during a drunken fit – with emotional abuse, seeking a connection only when in search of a handout. "I couldn't figure out how to deal with him," she recalls.