Spielberg recalls how young Barrymore ‘stormed’ into role
As ‘E.T.’ turns 40, director says he felt like a parent on set
LOS ANGELES Director Steven Spielberg was overwhelmed by the unstoppable force of six-year-old Drew Barrymore when casting his 1982 movie “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.” Spielberg recalled his long search to fill the role of Gertie in “E.T.” ended immediately after his first encounter with the pint-sized Barrymore and her outsized personality.
“Drew came into my office and took over the meeting by storm,” Spielberg said, speaking at the “E.T.” 40th-anniversary celebration at the 11th annual TCM Classic Film Festival. “She stormed the citadel of my office at MGM. She really did.”
The “Jaws” director was bowled over by the young Barrymore, who insisted she did not want to follow her famous Barrymore family footsteps into acting because she was too busy with her (imaginary) punk rock band. Spielberg knew that kind of “inner life” would allow Barrymore to visualize the film’s friendly alien, a mechanical puppet, as actually alive.
“She said, ‘I’m not an actor. I have a punk rock band.’ And she started telling me about this punk rock band that she had already formed. And I believed her,” Spielberg, 75, recalled during his onstage interview with TCM host Ben Mankiewicz. “I realized after a while that she didn’t really have a punk rock band.
But if she could believe she did, then she could believe this mechanical creature could be a real extraterrestrial.
“She was in my movie that day,” he added.
Spielberg also lauded the audition of then nine-year-old actor Henry Thomas for the role of Elliott in the movie. Thomas had struggled with the audition until Spielberg had him improvise.
“I set up a situation where he had a best friend who was a creature and he needs help; I didn’t say it was an alien. But these big bad guys from the government want to take him away,” said Spielberg. “And I rolled the video camera. The rest is on YouTube.”
The original audition tape is now online, showing Thomas getting tearful out of concern for the imaginary friend.
“He’s suffering,” said Spielberg of Thomas’s emotive audition. “He was defending this imaginary creature with his life. At the end you hear my voice where I say, ‘OK, kid. You got the part.’”
Thomas would shoot to stardom playing the soulful Elliott, Gertie’s older brother, who risks his life with his friends to get the lost alien to a spaceship to take him back to his home planet. The blockbuster won four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Spielberg.
Both Thomas and Barrymore were expected at the 40th-anniversary “E.T.” event Thursday, but both withdrew at the last minute.
Spielberg said that before making “E.T.” he had been a single guy obsessed with his filmmaking work, never thinking about having children. But with the number of children under his direction in the film so close to his heart, his mind started to change.
“I was a parent on the film, and I was very protective of Henry and the rest of the cast,” said Spielberg. “And I started thinking that maybe this could be my life someday. This was the first time it ever occurred to me that I could ever be a dad.”
Spielberg now has seven children — a blend of biological, adopted and stepchildren — and six grandchildren. “So E.T. worked very well for me,” said Spielberg.
Speaking of the film’s creation, Spielberg said Indiana Jones himself, Harrison Ford, came to the rescue in getting the film started. Spielberg was looking for an “E.T.” screenwriter while shooting “Raiders of the Lost Ark” with Ford, who was on the set with his then-screenwriter partner Melissa Mathison.
Spielberg pitched Mathison on writing the movie, but she declined.
“So I said to Harrison, ‘Your girlfriend turned me down.’ And he said, ‘Let me talk to her,’” Spielberg recalled. “And she came to me the next day and said, ‘OK, you got Harrison so excited about this movie. What is it I missed?’”
The two collaborated on the script. After reading Mathison’s script the first time, Spielberg recalled exclaiming: “I think I’ve read the greatest first draft script in my life.”
The “E.T.” screenplay was ultimately nominated for an Oscar.