“I Thought I Blew It”: Henry Thomas on the Audition, Trauma and Movie Magic Behind ‘E.T.’

Before E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial became the most beloved alien movie ever made — before it dethroned Star Wars at the box office, before kids everywhere pointed glowing fingers at each other in suburban backyards — Henry Thomas thought he’d already lost the part.

“I felt like I had done the worst job possible,” Thomas says on The Hollywood Reporter’s It Happened in Hollywood podcast. “I thought I blew it the minute I opened my mouth.”

What happened next is now the stuff of Hollywood legend. Steven Spielberg, unsatisfied with the scripted read, pivoted. Forget the sides, he said. He gave the 10-year-old actor a scenario: Your best friend is being taken away. And so Thomas didn’t act — he remembered.