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While in her teens, Diana Barrymore decided to study acting and enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Because of the prominence of the Barrymore name in the world of theatre, her move onto the stage began with much publicity including a 1939 cover of Life. At age 19, Diana Barrymore made her Broadway debut and the following year made her first appearance in motion pictures with a small role in a Warner Bros. production. In 1942, she signed a contract with Universal Studios who capitalized on her Barrymore name with a major promotion campaign billing her as "1942`s Most Sensational New Screen Personality." However, alcohol and drug problems soon emerged and negative publicity from major media sources dampened her prospects with widely read magazines such as Collier`s Weekly, writing about her conduct in an October 1942 article titled "The Barrymore Brat". After less than three years in Hollywood, and five significant film roles, Barrymore`s personal problems ended her film career.

Her father died in 1942 from cirrhosis of the liver after years of alcoholism. Barrymore`s life became a series of alcohol and drug related disasters marked by bouts of severe depression that resulted in several suicide attempts and extended sanitarium stays. She squandered her movie earnings and her inheritance from her father`s estate, and when her mother died in 1950 she was left with virtually nothing from a once vast family fortune.

After three bad marriages to addicted and sometimes abusive men, in 1955 Barrymore had herself hospitalized for nearly a full year of treatment. In 1957, she published her autobiography, Too Much, Too Soon, and the following year Warner Bros. made a film with the same title starring Dorothy Malone as Diana and Errol Flynn as her father.

On January 25, 1960, Barrymore died from a mixture of alcohol and sleeping pills. She is interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York next to her mother.

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