‘E.T.’ turns 40: Steven Spielberg recalls how 6-year-old Drew Barrymore ‘stormed’ into Gerti role
Steven Spielberg was overwhelmed by the unstoppable force of six-year-old Drew Barrymore when casting his 1982 classic 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 Thursday. “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 in 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.
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“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 extra-terrestrial.”
“She was in my movie that day,” he added.
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Spielberg also lauded over the audition of then 9-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’ emotive audition. “He was defending this imaginary creature with his life. At the end you hear my voice where I say, ‘Okay, 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.
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“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.”