Dee Wallace Was Elliot’s Mom In E.T. – And She’s Opened Up About Going Mad On Set
Dee Wallace is a bona fide “scream queen” thanks to her iconic roles in a slew of cult classic horror movies. But she also played an integral part in one of the most beloved family films of all time: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. You’d think scary movies would’ve been more mentally draining on her. Alas, that wasn’t the case! Wallace revealed that she was nearly driven mad on the E.T. set – and you may be surprised to learn why.
E.T. was such a phenomenon that it held the title of biggest box-office hit of all time at one point. Amazingly, Mental Floss notes that director Steven Spielberg held a private screening at the White House before it was released. He sat next to Ronald Reagan while his movie played and even claimed that it brought the leader of the free world to tears!
The story of E.T.’s inception is equally amazing. It actually began life as the combination of two separate Spielberg ideas. One was a semi-autobiographical movie about his lonely childhood, and the other was a sci-fi horror about a family being menaced by evil aliens. In that script, though, one of the aliens turned out to be friendly, and it formed a bond with the family’s son.
Spielberg decided to throw the two ideas together and create a movie about a boy and his friendly alien, though he didn’t completely abandon one of the concepts. The evil aliens tangling with the suburban family were changed to ghosts, and that idea became another seminal 1982 film. In the end, Spielberg wound up directing E.T. and producing Poltergeist at the same time.
In its simplest form, E.T. is a heart-warming story about a boy named Elliott befriending a harmless alien who has been stranded on Earth. But it is also a tale about the separation of the nuclear family unit and how that can affect both children and parents. In fact, the movie’s inspiration apparently came from Spielberg’s parents divorcing in 1960.
