Steven Spielberg Says He Saw Drew Barrymore's Life Spiraling While Filming E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is one of the greatest movies of all time. It’s atop the lists of the best films of its director, Steven Spielberg, as well as its young cast members, including Drew Barrymore, who famously bonded with the film’s director, becoming his goddaughter after the movie was made.

Barrymore went on to have a fantastic career, but not before enduring some rocky teenaged years filled with drugs and alcohol at very young ages, a stint in rehab, and an emancipation from her parents, who were never working in her best interest. Spielberg could see all of that trouble coming as early as E.T., when the actress was just seven, and he did his best to give her what she was missing out on.

In a new profile published by Vulture via Variety, Barrymore praised Spielberg as “the only person in my life to this day that ever was a parental figure.” He eventually agreed to be her godfather. Barrymore’s own father, the actor John Drew Barrymore, was an abusive alcoholic. “Talk about someone who was not a careerist,” Barrymore said. “He was like, ‘I will burn this fucking dynasty to the ground.’”

During the making of E.T., Spielberg made it his top priority to preserve the magic of the title character for the young Barrymore. In other words, she thought E.T. was real and he wanted to keep it that way. A couple weeks into filming, Barrymore noticed several men operating E.T. and demanded they leave set.

“I didn’t want to burst the bubble,” Spielberg said. “So I simply said, ‘It’s okay, E.T. is so special E.T. has eight assistants. I am the director, I only have one.”

Spielberg also kept operators on hand during non-filming hours such as lunch breaks so that Barrymore could eat with E.T. As Vulture reports, Barrymore even stayed with Spielberg “on weekends; he gave her a cat she named Gertie and took her to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm.”

Meanwhile, in her personal life, “She was staying up way past her bedtime, going to places she should have only been hearing about, and living a life at a very tender age that I think robbed her of her childhood,” Spielberg told Vulture. “Yet I felt very helpless because I wasn’t her dad. I could only kind of be a consigliere to her.”

But the director must have done something right. Spielberg and Barrymore remain close to this day.