Drew Barrymore has confessed she doesn't think that she is a good actor.

The 50 First Dates star told the New York Times that she had developed her career through a sound piece of advice from her godfather and E.T. director Steven Spielberg.

She revealed: "Steven told me, 'Don't act your characters. Be your characters'."

Asked if she had followed the advice, Drew replied: "Absolutely. I don't think I'm a good actor. I feel like it's fake and yucky and it doesn't ring true.

"But if you research and you study and make it personal, you just become that person, and it's your truth and everything else around you falls away. Then you're telling the truth, it's not lying, it's not fake."

She added about working on E.T.: "At six, I guess I was comfortable and more humorous than I would have remembered now. But once I got older and kept continuing acting, I don't know if I would have succeeded without that advice, because that's the thing that saved me.

"I'm not an actor, I'm a pretender."