Drew Barrymore inspired Steven Spielberg on the set of E.T. in the ’80s.
On Saturday, Jan. 25, the two opened up about working together on 1982’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial during a panel moderated by Dave Karger at the TCM Classic Film Festival at 92nd Street Y in New York City.
“I think E.T., for me, is the one I’m the most proud of,” Barrymore said, “because it’s the one that changed my life.”
The actress, 49, continued, “There’s no question about that. Everything in my life is about how I got believed in by one human being, and that is the life that I try to honor every day.”
The famed director, 78, added that it “changed my life also.”
“Up until that point — ’81, ’82 — I was just making movies,” Spielberg explained. “That was my life. I was obsessed with telling stories, but making E.T. made me want to be a father for the first time. I never even thought about that until E.T.”
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Barrymore quipped, “I didn’t ruin that for you?” to which Spielberg said, “The opposite.”
“Thank goodness, my job is done,” she replied, jokingly.
Earlier in the conversation, Spielberg admitted that he has watched the science-fiction flick “probably more than I’ve seen any other movie I’ve ever directed, partially because I’ve shown the film to all my kids.”
Spielberg now has seven adult children, ages 28 to 48.
“I have seven kids and six grandkids,” he said at the event. “I’ve shown the film to all my kids and a couple of my grandkids. Some of them are still too young, because I’m always worried about them being worried about E.T. and I want to let them know before they turn the corner and are surprised by something, what to expect.”
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In April 2022, Spielberg opened up about the movie being inspired by his own parents’ divorce while speaking at a special 40th anniversary celebration during the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival.
The director recalled thinking, “What if I turn my story about divorce into a story about children, a family, trying to fill the great need and creating such responsibility?”
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Spielberg continued, “A divorce creates great responsibility, especially if you have siblings; we all take care of each other. What if Elliott, or the kid – I hadn’t dreamed up his name yet – needed to, for the first time in his life, become responsible for a life form to fill the gap in his heart?”
He dived more into how the movie inspired his journey into parenthood at the event.
“I didn’t want to have kids because it was not a kind of equation that made sense for me as I was going from movie to movie to movie, script to script,” he said. “It never occurred to me until halfway through E.T.”
“I was a parent on that film,” Spielberg added, noting that he was feeling protective of the young cast, “especially Drew, who was only 6 years old.”
He said, “And I started thinking, ‘Well, maybe this could be my real life someday.’ It was the first time that it occurred to me that maybe I could be a dad. And maybe in a way, a director is a dad, or a mom.”
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