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Steven Spielberg first hired Drew Barrymore for ET: The Extra-Terrestrial when she was just seven-years-old.
While the sweet girl who played Gertie Taylor was kind and timid, behind the scenes was she enduring dreadful abuse.
In a new interview with Vulture Barrymore described her father, John Drew Barrymore, as an “abusive drunk”.
She claimed her first memory of him was when he “stormed in and tossed her into a wall when she was just three-years-old.
Thankfully, when Spielberg came onto the scene, she was treated in a completely new way.
READ MORE: Steven Spielberg finally gives his verdict on Indiana Jones 5
Watch ET: The Extra-Terrestrial for free here.
Barrymore said Spielberg was “the only person in my life to this day that ever was a parental figure”.
Eventually, the director was asked by Barrymore’s parents – John Drew and Ildikó Jaid Makó – if he would be her father. He said “no” but went on to become her godfather.
Spielberg himself said: “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 added: “Yet I felt very helpless because I wasn’t her dad. I could only kind of be a consigliere to her.”
Barrymore revealed she first tried cocaine at 12-years-old and later spent 18 months in an institution. She also went to rehab at 14-years-old after an attempt on her own life.
She was successfully emancipated from her parents at 15-years-old.
Barrymore looked back on the filming of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial fondly, however.
The youngster thought the alien was actually real, and Spielberg attempted to keep up this fantasy for as long as possible.
“I didn’t want to burst the bubble,” he said. “ET is so special he has eight assistants,” he went on to tell her about the creature’s operators. “I am the director, I only have one.”
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video now.
