Featured Image Credit: Jon Kopaloff/Getty
Topics: Celebrity, Drew Barrymore, Steven Spielberg, Film and TV, Parenting
Lucy Devine
Topics: Celebrity, Drew Barrymore, Steven Spielberg, Film and TV, Parenting
When Drew Barrymore posed for Playboy back in 1995, her godfather Steven Spielberg had a pretty hilarious response to the cover.
Barrymore's acting career initially kicked off back in 1982 when she was cast as Gertie in Spielberg's hugely popular sci-fi movie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
The film followed 10-year-old Elliot Taylor (Henry Thomas) as he befriends an extraterrestrial left behind on Earth.
Ever since and Barrymore has always remained close to Spielberg, with the director being her godfather as well as a father-figure throughout her childhood and into adult life.
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In fact, Barrymore has since called the director 'the only person in my life to this day that ever was a parental figure'.
Barrymore actually asked Spielberg to become her dad while shooting the movie, but the director had to decline.
The filmmaker explained he did guide Barrymore, however, especially during her younger years. In an interview with Vulture, he said that on one occasion, she arrived on set wearing red lipstick.
“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,” he said.
“Yet I felt very helpless because I wasn’t her dad. I could only kind of be a consigliere to her.”
So when the actress appeared on the cover of Playboy, Spielberg had a pretty funny reaction to it.
Spielberg sent Barrymore a quilt with the message, 'cover up' as well as a copy of the magazine and some paper doll clothes.
Speaking on the Drew Barrymore Show, he explained what happened when he saw the cover.
Spielberg said: "I sent her the Playboy layout and I had an artist come over and do paper doll cut out clothes which I glued on to all of the partially exposed photographs, and sent the whole thing back to Drew now she's dressed."
Barrymore added: "Because that’s what parents do!
"Yeah, he’s like the first person I knew cared."
Explaining how she came to get her role working with Spielberg on E.T. in the first place, Barrymore said that she'd initially interviewed for a different movie.
In an unearthed clip, she said: "They interviewed me for Poltergeist first and she said, 'She's not really like the girl who's in the part in the script'.
"So Kathy Kennedy, the producer of E.T. said, 'Well maybe she's right for E.T.', cause [Spielberg] was doing E.T. and Poltergeist at the same time."