Steven Spielberg Says Directing a Young Drew Barrymore inE.T.‘Made Me Want to Be a Father’

Mar. 15, 2025

Drew Barrymore and Steven Spielberg on Jan. 25, 2025.Photo:Mike Coppola/Getty

Mike Coppola/Getty

Drew BarrymoreinspiredSteven Spielbergon the set ofE.T.in the ’80s.

“I thinkE.T., for me, is the one I’m the most proud of,” Barrymore said, “because it’s the one that changed my life.”

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 makingE.T.made me want to be a father for the first time. I never even thought about that untilE.T.”

Drew Barrymore and Steven Spielberg on Jan. 25, 2025.Mike Coppola/Getty

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 hasseven adult children, ages 28 to 48.

Drew Barrymore on the ‘E.T.’ set.Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty

Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty

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 throughE.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.”

source: people.com