It’s not often that work is a driving factor for making someone want to become a parent. Sure, jobs are a major talking point in terms of what postpartum life will look like, but it’s rare that we hear stories about careers being the catalyst to parenthood.
And yet … Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg says he “never even thought” about fatherhood until he made E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
During a panel at the TCM Classic Film Festival, Spielberg sat alongside Barrymore and chatted about the famed 1982 film. They both agreed the movie was life-changing. For Barrymore, it jumpstarted her career. For Spielberg, it made him reflect on his personal life.
“Up until that point — ’81, ’82 — I was just making movies,” Spielberg said, per People. “That was my life. I was obsessed with telling stories, but making E.T. made me want to be a father for the first time. I never even thought about that until E.T.”
It was working alongside then-6-year-old Barrymore that made the 35-year-old want to have kids of his own. “I didn’t ruin that for you?” Barrymore quipped.
“The opposite,” Spielberg said to his goddaughter.
In fact, the director now has seven adult kids. He shares son Max with his ex-wife Amy Irving, and kids Sasha, Sawyer, Mikaela, and Destry with wife Kate Capshaw. He is also stepdad to Capshaw’s kids Jessica and Theo.
In 2022, during a special 40th anniversary celebration of the beloved sci-fi film, the Jurassic Park director also talked about E.T. setting him on a path to fatherhood.
“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 told Variety. “It never occurred to me until halfway through E.T.”
“I was a parent on that film,” Spielberg added, saying that “in a way” a director is a dad or mom. He added that he felt protective of the young cast members, “especially” Barrymore.
“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 … I really felt that that would be my big production.”
During the recent panel, Spielberg admitted that because of his seven kids and six grandkids, E.T. is probably his own movie that he’s seen the most.
“I’ve shown the film to all my kids and a couple of my grandkids,” he said, “Some of them are still too young because I’m always worried about them being worried about E.T. and I want to let them know before they turn the corner and are surprised by something, what to expect.”
You might be surprised at whose kids have famous celebrity godparents!
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