The actress opened up to ET about how playing a woman returned from the dead brought about an 'awakening' in her own life.
In The Santa Clarita Diet, Drew Barrymore plays a woman named Sheila who dies and comes back to life as an undead flesh-craving zombie.
While returning from the dead obviously has a profound impact on the life of her character, Barrymore admits that playing Sheila also brought about a real change in her own life.
WATCH: Drew Barrymore Reveals She Lost 20 Pounds Filming New Zombie Show
"[Becoming a zombie] becomes an awakening for [Sheila's] life, and that gave me one too," the 41-year-old Golden Globe winner told ET's Cameron Mathison at the premiere of her new Netflix series on Wednesday. "I lost like, 20 pounds playing her and had an attitudinal shift and plucked my eyebrows and, I don’t know, just started thinking like a woman again. And it was amazing."
Barrymore said that she began to fall in love with her unique character during production, and would ask herself "'What would Sheila do?'"
"She's got this great feminist empowerment thing going for her that I think was very positive for me," Barrymore added, joking, "in a very sick and wrong way."
WATCH: Drew Barrymore Has a Taste for Human Flesh in New Netflix Show, 'The Santa Clarita Diet'
The actress has been very candid in recent months about her split from ex-husband Will Kopelman last April. The pair, who share two daughters, 4-year-old Olive and 2-year-old Frankie, called it quits after nearly four years together.
Barrymore stopped by the Today show on Friday to promote the show, where she opened up on how the role "came in the middle of the moment in my life where I had let myself go due to personal circumstances," and playing the flesh-eating Sheila allowed her to "come alive” with her undead character. Check out the video below to hear more.