Drew Barrymore Says She 'Would Show Up' for Another Movie with Friend Adam Sandler

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler at The National Board of Review Annual Awards Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City on Jan. 8.

Drew Barrymore is happily hosting Season 3 of her eponymous talk show — but she might return to the movies someday, especially if her close friend Adam Sandler is involved.

Becoming a talk show host allowed the superstar to have "so much growth" personally and professionally. "I knew what I was pitching was not playing a character, it was being me," she tells PEOPLE of developing The Drew Barrymore Show. "I wanted to work as me, whatever it was going to be."

The show also allowed her to have a schedule that was more family-friendly while raising daughters Frankie and Olive, now 8 and 10. Films require "investing two years into something that could disappear overnight. It doesn't feel like the right Sisyphus to me," she says. But doing the show, she says, "is no farewell. This is no, 'I'm never going back.' Maybe when the kids are older."

The actress and producer of Charlie's Angels — the 2000 film and its sequel did more than $500 million worldwide at the box office — is happy behind the camera. "I loved directing, maybe [I'd do] commercials and TV," she says. (Her first feature film was the roller-derby drama Whip It.)

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And some projects could entice her to take a starring role. "As soon as you talk about Adam Sandler, I'm like, 'Oh, well maybe. Sure,'" she says.

She and Sandler costarred in 50 First Dates, The Wedding Singer and Blended, which they filmed in Africa when Olive was 8 months old.

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"I was terrified to bring an eighth month old, I was overwhelmed," she says. "But I did it because I feel so safe with Adam. That was the only person on the planet who could have gotten me to go do a film [at that time]. He's a family man."

Her then-husband Will Kopelman traveled with her: "And we made Frankie on that film, so that one has a very near and dear place in my heart."

Barrymore also wouldn't say no to Charlie's Angels 3, which Mindy Kaling recently floated on The Drew Barrymore Show.

"Those are interesting challenges because they have been established. That really is building upon something. There's so much history there that they don't feel like [the work of] making films. It's like, 'Do you want to spend your life doing that? With those people?' Yes. I would show up. I really would," she says.

"Because then you're talking about life experiences, and time with people who are really important to you, and that isn't work. That's a gift."

For more on Drew Barrymore, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE.