Showbiz dynasties look out for one another, it seems.
The brothers from the band Nelson — the sons of rock ’n’ roll icon Ricky Nelson and the grandchildren of TV greats Ozzie and Harriet Nelson — tell us they helped keep fellow screen scion Drew Barrymore safe from the worst of a Hollywood childhood. Twins Gunnar and Matthew Nelson — who have a new memoir, “What Happened to Your Hair?” out tomorrow — recently told Page Six that they feel lucky to have dodged the fate of many of their “privileged” peers.
“We had a rough childhood,” Gunnar told us. “Our mother [Kristin Nelson] loved the vodka, and she was mean.”
But he said the bond between him and twin Matthew and their music “saved” them. “We could have been Hollywood statistics, like so many before us, especially sons and daughters [of stars],” he said.
Case in point: The “After the Rain” hitmakers once ran into Barrymore, whose acting dynasty stretches back many generations, at a night club around 1986, when she was just a child, and acted as ad hoc bodyguards.
“There was a club in Los Angeles called Helena’s, and it was the hot spot — Prince went every night. It was his hang,” Matthew told us.
“We ran into Drew [there]. She was a little girl. Maybe 11. Her mother was a piece of work — she took her there, basically, to get into the club,” he said. “We just saw this really sweet little girl. We thought, ‘We need to help this little person.’”
“There were a bunch of creepy guys coming up,” added Gunnar. “Matt sat on one side and I sat on the other side and all we did was tell them to f – – k off. Drew never forgot that.”
The book covers their difficult but glamorous childhoods, the horrifying plane-crash death of their beloved father and their rise to their chart-topping success while navigating the stigma and blessings of having “a head start” in the entertainment industry.
