So much so that Barrymore even asked Spielberg to be her father.
He declined, though he did eventually agree to become her godfather.
“Yet I felt very helpless because I wasn’t her dad.
Steven Spielberg and Drew Barrymore.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
I could only kind of be a consigliere to her.”
Part of Spielberg’s dad energy came from his desire to help maintain Barrymore’s childlike wonder on set.
“I really loved him in such a profound way,” she said.
Steven Spielberg and Drew Barrymore on the set of ‘E.T.'.Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
“I would go and take lunch to him.”
Spielberg took note and helped maintain the illusion, particularly after Barrymore noticed men behind a wall operating E.T.
and asked the director to kick them out.
“I didn’t want to burst the bubble,” Spielberg told Vulture.
“So I simply said, ‘It’s okay, E.T.
is so special E.T.
I am the director, I only have one.”
Spielberg also shot the movie in continuity for the benefit of his child actors.
What we just shot happened yesterday.
I wanted them to actually live a life, a life of the story.
Because they knew soon they’d be going home."
(Barrymore famously had a troubled childhood and went to rehab at 13.)
Barrymore previouslydiscussed Spielberg’s paternal instinctswhen fellow child starKe Huy Quanappeared on her talk show.
She revealed that she’d met Quan while visiting the set ofIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doomin London.
“He would just bring me to work with him,” she explained.
She also spoke to Quan about Spielberg’s continued investment in their lives.
