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E.T.’s Dee Wallace Keeps Her Heart Open
The actress reflects on the 40-year-anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s classic film
When she first read the screenplay with the working title “A Boy’s Life” in 1981, Dee Wallace knew it was special. “Melissa Mathison’s script was magical. It had heart and truth,” the 72-year-old still-working actress tells me during a recent telephone conversation. “Know what you want, allow your friends to help you, keep your heart open, live in love, and you get back home. Isn’t that what we need a lot more of today?”
It’s hard to disagree with her.
Unsure what the role of “Mary”, a single mother of three children, might do for her career, Wallace was certain the film would “do good for the world”, so she accepted the part under the direction of Steven Spielberg, fresh off his 1981 blockbuster hit, “Raiders of the Lost Arc.” Spielberg’s latest, about a young boy who befriends an abandoned alien and helps him return home, changed it’s name to “E.T. and Me” and finally, “E.T.”, and the rest is history.
40 years later, Wallace reflects on the decision that altered the course of her career, and her life, from her home in Woodland Hills, California.
“The project was first brought to my attention by my agent calling me and saying, ‘Steven…
