Drew Barrymore Asked Steven Spielberg to Be Her Dad While Filming ‘E.T.’: “Only Person in My Life” That “Ever Was a Parental Figure”

Drew Barrymore recently described Steven Spielberg — whom she met on the set of her feature film debut E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial — as the “only person” to be a “parental figure” to her, so much so that she even asked him to be her dad.

The Drew Barrymore Show host was only seven years old when she starred in the movie, which kickstarted her career. Since then, she has maintained a close friendship with the Academy Award-winning director.

“[He is] the only person in my life to this day that ever was a parental figure,”  Barrymore said in a June 5 Vulture profile.

When she asked him if he would be her dad while filming the hit movie, he said no. However, he agreed to be her godfather instead.

“[Barrymore] 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 the outlet. “Yet I felt very helpless because I wasn’t her dad. I could only kind of be a consigliere to her.”

According to the profile, Barrymore stayed with Spielberg on the weekends, and he bought her a cat she named Gertie and took her to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm.

The director strived to preserve her childhood as best he could while filming the 1982 sci-fi hit. Barrymore once revealed that she would “go and take lunch” to E.T., who she thought was real.

Spielberg told Vulture Barrymore once noticed men behind a wall operating the E.T. doll and asked him to kick them out. He recalled, “I didn’t want to burst the bubble. 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.'”

As for her biological father, John Drew Barrymore? The 50 First Dates star remembered him as an abusive drunk who “stormed in and tossed her into a wall” when she was three years old. She also recalled the actor holding her hand over a candle and telling her that “pain is in the imagination.”

After leaving her mother, the actress said he would reappear whenever he needed money.

“Talk about someone who was not a careerist,” Barrymore said. “He was like, ‘I will burn this fucking dynasty to the ground.'”