Drew Barrymore Asked Steven Spielberg to Be Her Dad When She Was 7

Back when she was just 7 years old, Drew Barrymore made her feature film debut in Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. And while fans probably remember her for her baby face and her love of Reese's Pieces, the movie held a much deeper significance to Barrymore. In a new profile published by Vulture, the actress and talk show host explained that while she was filming the movie, she asked Spielberg to be her father. Fans know that Barrymore has had a strained relationship with her biological parents (both actors themselves) and actually became emancipated from her mother at age 14. 

"[He is] the only person in my life to this day that ever was a parental figure," Barrymore said of working with Spielberg. During a 40-year-anniversary episode of her talk show, she mentioned the director, as well, saying, "I really loved him in such a profound way. I would go and take lunch to him."

She went on to say that the two spent a lot of time together during breaks in production, even going as far as taking trips to theme parks together — and Spielberg even gave her a cat named Gertie, the same name as her character from the film.

"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 recalled to the outlet, noting that he eventually did become her godfather. "Yet I felt very helpless because I wasn't her dad. I could only kind of be a consigliere to her."

During a chat with Oscar winner and fellow child star Ke Huy Quan on her show, Drew congratulated him and mentioned Spielberg again, who Quan worked with on Indiana Jones.

"Steven is the type of incredible human being that, I think, just wants to know [that] all of his kids are OK," she said. "So, it just felt like this wonderful moment where we could be like, 'Your kids are OK.'"