100 Fun Facts About E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

E.T. builds his 'phone home' communicator around which toy?

Speak & Spell. Gertie's spelling toy becomes the keyboard of a transmitter cobbled together from a record player, a saw blade and other household junk.

Which animals does Elliott set free from his school science class in E.T.?

Frogs. The class is about to dissect them when Elliott lets them all loose, and the classmate he then kisses is Erika Eleniak, later of Baywatch.

Which candy is used to lure E.T. into the house?

Reese's Pieces. Mars refused to let M&M's appear, worried that E.T. would frighten children, so Hershey's new candy got the part and its sales soared.

Who played Elliott, the boy who befriends the alien, in E.T.?

Henry Thomas. After a flat reading, he improvised a scene pleading to keep E.T., crying real tears, and Spielberg hired him on the spot.

Which future star played Gertie, the little sister in E.T.?

Drew Barrymore. She first auditioned for Poltergeist, but Spielberg steered her to E.T. after the six-year-old spun him a tale about touring with her punk rock band.

Who wrote the screenplay for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial?

Melissa Mathison. Spielberg pitched her the idea on the Tunisian set of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and she delivered a first draft in under two months.

What was the title of the darker abandoned alien project that E.T. grew out of?

Night Skies. In that script hostile aliens besieged a farm family; Buddy, the one gentle alien left behind at the end, became the seed of E.T.

Which studio rejected E.T. as 'a wimpy Walt Disney movie'?

Columbia Pictures. Its research said only small children would come, but the handover deal left it 5% of the net profits, more than it made on any of its own 1982 films.

Which studio bought the E.T. script for $1 million after a rival turned it down?

Universal. Spielberg took the rejected project to Sid Sheinberg, president of the studio's parent company MCA, who bought it and left the rival a 5% share of the profits.

On Halloween, E.T. toddles after a trick-or-treater dressed as which film character?

Yoda. E.T. calls 'Home!' after him, a joke Spielberg slipped in using a costume he had not told George Lucas about.

Who designed E.T.'s animatronics?

Carlo Rambaldi. The Italian artist, who had built an alien for Close Encounters, made the $1.5 million puppet to Spielberg's brief: a creature only a mother could love.

E.T.'s eyes were modelled on poet Carl Sandburg, novelist Ernest Hemingway and which scientist?

Albert Einstein. Spielberg wanted eyes as wizened and sad as theirs, and had them made by a specialist in glass eyes from an eye institute.

How did Matthew DeMeritt, a boy born without legs, perform E.T.'s stumbles and falls?

Walking on his hands. He took the suit for scenes such as E.T.'s drunken tumble, sharing the role with two little people while a mime in prosthetic gloves supplied the hands.

Which actress friend of Spielberg read all of E.T.'s lines for a temporary soundtrack?

Debra Winger. Spielberg loved her low, husky voice, but most of the final lines came from Pat Welsh, a two-packs-a-day smoker the sound designer overheard in a camera shop.

Which star's scene as the school principal was cut from E.T.?

Harrison Ford. He played the principal who lectures Elliott, yet the camera never showed the star's face, and the whole scene was lifted out in the edit.

Under what cover name was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial shot to keep the plot secret?

A Boy's Life. The working title hid the alien from anyone who might copy the plot, and it fitted: Spielberg based the lonely boy on his own childhood after his parents' divorce.

What was unusual about the sequence in which E.T. was filmed?

It was shot roughly chronologically. Spielberg reasoned that the farewell would hit harder if his young cast had lived the whole story first and were really saying goodbye.

E.T.'s forest scenes were shot among which towering trees near Crescent City, California?

Coast redwoods. The crew spent the last six days of the shoot in the forest in far northern California, after weeks on soundstages and suburban streets.

Which children's TV show helps E.T. pick up his first words of English?

Sesame Street. Gertie has it on while minding him, and as the show drills the letter B she coaches him into his first phrase: 'Be good.'

Which children's classic is Mary reading to Gertie while E.T. listens from the closet?

Peter Pan. She reads the scene where Tinker Bell drinks poison to save Peter, and critics have long compared E.T. himself to the boy who cannot stay.

What game do Michael and his friends play at the kitchen table in E.T.?

Dungeons & Dragons. The young actors kept playing it between takes, and a closing scene with Elliott now running the game himself was shot but cut.

Which comic strip inspires E.T. to build his communication device?

Buck Rogers. E.T. spots the spaceman calling for help in a newspaper strip, then holds the page up to Elliott and says 'Phone'.

Which 1952 film is E.T. watching on television when Elliott kisses a girl at school?

The Quiet Man. As John Wayne pulls Maureen O'Hara into a kiss on screen, Elliott, who feels what E.T. feels, grabs a classmate and does the same.

Home alone, E.T. gets Elliott drunk at school by raiding the fridge for what?

Beer. Elliott feels whatever E.T. feels, so as the alien works through a six-pack at home, the boy turns tipsy in the middle of science class.

What does E.T. revive as an early sign of his powers?

A pot of wilted flowers. The plant, a geranium in the script, droops as E.T. sickens and blooms again when he revives, and Gertie hands it to him as a farewell gift.

What is the name of the lead government agent played by Peter Coyote in E.T.?

Keys. For most of the film he is shown only from the waist down, known by the ring of keys clanking on his belt, and the credits name him after them.

Who plays Mary, the children's single mother, in E.T.?

Dee Wallace. Spielberg shot the other adults from the waist down for much of the film to keep a child's-eye view, and hers is the one grown-up face shown throughout.

Which actor played Tyler, one of Michael's bike-riding friends, in E.T.?

C. Thomas Howell. Ralph Macchio was also in the running for the part, and a year later the two ended up side by side as greasers in The Outsiders.

Who composed E.T.'s score, including the famous Flying Theme?

John Williams. When the finale would not sync with the orchestra, Spielberg told him to conduct it as pure music and then recut the film to fit the recording.

Which pop superstar narrated the E.T. storybook album in 1982?

Michael Jackson. Quincy Jones produced the storybook while the two were making Thriller, and it won Jackson a Grammy for best recording for children.

At which film festival did E.T. premiere as the closing-night film?

Cannes. A crowd known for snubbing Hollywood fare began clapping and stamping fifteen minutes before the end, and at first the film-makers thought it hated the film.

Which film did E.T. overtake in 1983 to become the highest-grossing film ever?

Star Wars. George Lucas's film had taken the record from Spielberg's own Jaws only a few years before, so E.T. won the title back for its director.

Spielberg broke his own E.T. box-office record with which later film?

Jurassic Park. It ended E.T.'s eleven-year reign in 1993, and Spielberg finished it by satellite link from Poland, where he was already shooting Schindler's List.

What does E.T.'s spaceship leave across the sky as it departs?

A rainbow. It arcs over the forest as the ship shrinks to a point of light, and the film ends on a close-up of Elliott's upturned face.

Which film beat E.T. to the Best Picture Oscar in 1983?

Gandhi's director Richard Attenborough said he was certain E.T. would and should have won.

Which Oscar did E.T. win?

Best Visual Effects. Nine nominations brought four wins, all for craft: effects, score, sound and sound effects editing, while the directing and writing prizes went elsewhere.

Which word does E.T. say, hand on his heart, as he leaves Elliott?

Ouch. E.T. picks the word up when Elliott cuts his finger, heals the wound with a glowing fingertip, and at their parting Elliott says it back.

Which honour did Spielberg receive when E.T. was screened at the United Nations in September 1982?

A UN Peace Medal. The film's plea for understanding had travelled far beyond cinemas by then, and it is also said to have left Princess Diana in tears.

Which Indian filmmaker claimed E.T. drew on his unproduced 1967 script The Alien?

Satyajit Ray. Copies of his script had circulated in Hollywood after a studio deal collapsed, but he chose not to take Spielberg to court.

What replaced the federal agents' guns in the 2002 Special Edition of E.T.?

Walkie-talkies. Spielberg had come to regret aiming guns at children on bikes, then regretted the digital swap too and went back to the 1982 cut for later releases.

Which word replaced 'terrorist' in Mary's line about Michael's costume in the 2002 cut of E.T.?

Hippie. The line was redubbed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, a swap one critic called implausible, and later releases went back to the 1982 dialogue.

Which animated show mocked the 2002 changes to E.T. in its episode 'Free Hat'?

South Park. In 'Free Hat' the boys try to stop Spielberg and George Lucas from digitally 'improving' Raiders of the Lost Ark the same way.

Where did Atari bury truckloads of unsold cartridges, E.T. among them, in 1983?

Alamogordo, New Mexico. Long written off as an urban legend, the landfill was dug up in 2014 and the crushed cartridges were really there.

About how long did programmer Howard Scott Warshaw have to make Atari's E.T. video game?

Five weeks. Atari wanted it in shops for Christmas 1982, when a game normally took six months or more, and the flop is often blamed for hastening the 1983 video game crash.

What title was proposed for the E.T. sequel that was outlined in 1982 but never made?

E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears. Evil aliens would have kidnapped Elliott and his friends, but Spielberg dropped it, feeling a sequel would only spoil the original.

The image of Elliott and E.T. cycling across the moon became the logo of which production company?

Amblin Entertainment. Spielberg's own company took the silhouette as its emblem, first showing it before Gremlins; the moon itself was filmed near the effects studio in California.

Members of E.T.'s species appear as background senators in which George Lucas film?

The Phantom Menace. A small delegation of E.T.'s kind sits in one of the floating pods of the Galactic Senate, a cameo George Lucas added as a nod to his friend's film.

Which company's 2019 holiday commercial reunited a grown-up Elliott with E.T.?

Xfinity. The cable brand's holiday advert brought back the actor who had played Elliott as a boy, 37 years after the original film.

What is the name of Elliott's family dog in E.T.?

Harvey. Elliott calls the name into the dark when he first hears something in the backyard, and the dog later tags along on the Halloween walk.

How does E.T. say goodbye on the E.T. Adventure ride?

By name. Riders give it to an attendant before boarding, it is stored on the pass they are handed, and a computer feeds each name to the animatronic E.T. for the farewell.

Which candy's maker turned down an offer to feature it in E.T., a decision a rival cashed in on?

M&M's maker Mars said no, so a rival peanut butter candy took the part and saw its sales soar.

Who plays the medical team trying to save E.T., cast so the technical dialogue sounded natural?

Real doctors from the USC Medical Center were recruited because Spielberg felt actors would sound unnatural delivering lines of technical medical dialogue.

In E.T.'s first half, what does the camera almost never show of any adult except Elliott's mother?

Their faces stay out of frame because the adults are filmed from the waist down, a tribute to the cartoons of Tex Avery.

E.T. grew out of an imaginary alien friend Steven Spielberg invented after which family event?

His parents' divorce left a void that he filled with an alien companion he later described as the brother he never had.

E.T.'s original 1982 poster echoes which Renaissance painting?

The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo inspired the touching fingers, a choice Spielberg's biographer says was meant to appeal to Christian audiences.

E.T.'s sound designer found the alien's raspy voice in an elderly woman he happened to meet where?

In a photography shop he met a former radio soap actress whose two-packs-a-day smoking habit had roughened her voice, and he paid her $380 for the recording.

The seven-year-old who played Gertie in E.T. became the youngest-ever host of which TV show?

Saturday Night Live gave her the job in November 1982, during its eighth season, five months after the film opened.

What were E.T. and his fellow aliens doing in a forest at night when government agents arrived?

Collecting plants was the visitors' mission, and E.T. is left behind when he strays from the group and the ship has to leave in a hurry.

Which Netflix series modelled its young hero Mike Wheeler on Elliott from E.T.?

Stranger Things borrows more than the boy: a hidden otherworldly visitor, pursuing government agents and a gang of loyal children all echo the 1982 film.

How did E.T.'s director later feel about digitally altering the film for its 2002 Special Edition?

He regretted it, saying a film should be left untouched to represent the culture of its time, and later disc releases carry only the 1982 cut.

How does Elliott fake a fever so he can stay home from school with E.T.?

Heats a thermometer on a lamp, a trick Spielberg himself often used as a boy, while warming his face with a heating pad.

Which injury of Elliott's does E.T. heal in an instant with a single glowing touch?

A cut finger, nicked on a saw blade, heals at once when E.T. reaches out and touches it with his own glowing fingertip.

What does Elliott toss into the backyard shed, only for the hidden E.T. to send it back?

A ball comes back out because the stranded E.T. has taken shelter in the family's shed, a moment critic Pauline Kael called part of a dreamscape.

Where does Michael find E.T. pale and weakened the morning after the night in the forest?

In a culvert is where Michael finds him, and he gets E.T. home just before government agents quarantine the house.

What is E.T. showing Elliott and his siblings when he makes several small objects float in the air?

His planetary system hangs in mid-air after the children ask about his origins, a display of what his mind alone can do.

Which singer had a 1982 top-five hit with Heartlight, a ballad reportedly inspired by E.T.?

Neil Diamond wrote it with Carole Bayer Sager and Burt Bacharach, and is said to have paid the studio $25,000 because the song drew on the film.

Which member of the British royal family was reported to be in tears after watching E.T.?

Princess Diana was moved to tears, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan were just as affected at a White House screening in June 1982.

On the E.T. Adventure theme park ride, each rider's seat is shaped like which vehicle?

A bicycle with handlebars that double as lap bars carries each rider, recreating the film's flying chase.

Which arcade hit did Steven Spielberg suggest Atari's E.T. video game should be more like?

Pac-Man was his suggestion, but the programmer thought it too derivative and kept his own design, later admitting the idea might have had merit.

In Atari's E.T. video game, the player hunts for three scattered pieces of which device?

A telephone has to be rebuilt so the alien can call his home planet, and its pieces lie at the bottom of the game's much-criticised pits.

The boy cast as Elliott arrived at his E.T. audition dressed as which big-screen hero?

Indiana Jones was his outfit, but it was an improvised scene, with tears brought on by thoughts of his dead dog, that won him the part.

The young actress cast as Gertie in E.T. won over Spielberg with a tall tale that she led what?

A punk rock band was her invention, and it convinced him she had the imagination the mischievous little sister needed.

Which future Baywatch star, then aged 12, played the classmate Elliott kisses in E.T.?

Erika Eleniak was making her first feature film, years before she joined the lifeguard series as Shauni McClain in 1989.

Which actor played Michael, Elliott's teasing older brother, in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial?

Robert MacNaughton auditioned eight times for the part, then jumped back and knocked down a set of shelves when he first saw the creature on set.

After retiring from acting in 2002, the actor who played Michael in E.T. took which job?

Mail handler was his job at bulk postal facilities in Phoenix and Jersey City, before he came back to acting in 2013.

The actress who played Elliott's mother in E.T. starred the next year in which Stephen King film?

Cujo cast her opposite her real-life husband Christopher Stone, one of the many horror roles that made her known as a scream queen.

The actor who played Elliott in E.T. later won a Saturn Award for which Netflix horror series?

The Haunting of Hill House was one of many projects he made with director Mike Flanagan, among them Doctor Sleep and Midnight Mass.

Which fellow director suggested the scene of E.T. hiding among stuffed toys in Elliott's closet?

Robert Zemeckis pitched the idea after reading a draft of the screenplay that Spielberg had sent him.

Which E.T. producer visited an eye institute to study real and glass eyes for the alien?

Kathleen Kennedy hired the institute's staff to make the eyes, on what was her first film as a producer, long before she ran Lucasfilm.

A performer from which profession wore prosthetics to play the hands of E.T.?

A professional mime, Caprice Roth, filled the prosthetic hands, while three other performers took turns inside the full costume.

A painting by E.T.'s own creature designer, Women of Delta, inspired which feature of the alien?

His extendable neck came from the designer's own canvas, and the finished puppet took three months and $1.5 million to build.

E.T.'s 1988 video rental record stood until the VHS release of which superhero film a year later?

Batman took the record a year after E.T.'s cassette had been rented more than six million times in its first two weeks.

What did Spielberg do after E.T.'s composer struggled to time the music for the final chase?

Recut the scene to fit, after switching off the projector and telling the composer to record the music the way he wanted it.

E.T.'s 1988 VHS cassettes had tape guards in which unusual colour, to help foil pirate copies?

Green guards and hubs marked a genuine copy, as did a small holographic sticker, and the tape went on to sell over 15 million units in the US.

In which premium big-screen format was E.T. re-released in 2022 to mark its 40th anniversary?

IMAX screens showed it from August 12, 2022, three weeks before another Spielberg classic, Jaws, got the same treatment.

Which US preservation list, kept by the Library of Congress, added E.T. in 1994?

National Film Registry selection came just twelve years after release, an honour for films judged culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.

Spielberg dismissed talk of E.T. as a Christian parable by citing which business run by his mother?

A kosher restaurant in Los Angeles was his punchline, after critics compared the alien's death and revival to the story of Jesus.

Which critic later wrote an essay on E.T. as a letter to his grandchildren?

Roger Ebert gave the film four stars on release and recalled a festival crowd of seasoned filmgoers whooping when the bikes took flight.

Which 1988 film about a boy and a lost alien was panned as an E.T. copy stuffed with fast-food plugs?

Mac and Me even won a Golden Raspberry for Worst New Star, awarded to the fast-food clown Ronald McDonald.

Whose curators added a landfill-excavated E.T. game cartridge to their collection in 2014?

Smithsonian Institution curators took one of the cartridges dug up that year, when only about a tenth of some 1,300 recovered games were E.T.

In 1998 public service announcements, E.T.'s voice reminded American drivers to do what?

Buckle their seat belts was the message, and road signs showing a stylised E.T. wearing one went up on selected roads around the United States.

Which UK phone company made E.T. the star of its advertising campaign in 1999?

BT, short for British Telecommunications, hired the homesick alien a year after he had appeared in American public service announcements.

Advhena magnifica, found deep in the Pacific and nicknamed after E.T., is what kind of animal?

A sponge found about 2,000 metres down, it earned the nickname for an elongated shape and large openings that recall the alien's head and eyes.

E.T. is a playable character, with a world of his own, in which toys-to-life video game?

Lego Dimensions mixed more than thirty franchises on one toy pad, and its E.T. world hands out side quests from the film's characters.

What name does a 1985 follow-up novel give to the home planet of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial?

Brodo Asogi gives him a cold welcome: he is demoted and sent into exile, then breaks its laws trying to get back to Earth.

Which novelist wrote the bestselling E.T. novelization and then a 1985 sequel novel?

William Kotzwinkle got the job because Spielberg admired his novel The Fan Man, and his adaptation became the best-selling novel of 1982.

Which bike maker built the BMX models ridden in E.T. and later sold red-and-white E.T. editions?

Kuwahara, a family firm founded in Osaka in 1918, reissued its E.T. model for the film's 20th and 40th anniversaries.

Which cinematographer shot E.T. and went on to film The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun?

Allen Daviau won the job by sending Spielberg a tape of a TV film about children that he had shot, The Boy Who Drank Too Much.

E.T.'s suburban neighbourhood scenes were shot in 1981 in which area of Southern California?

San Fernando Valley streets stood in for Elliott's suburb, while the inside of his house was built at a studio in Culver City.

At the Golden Globes, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial won the top film prize in which category?

Drama was its category, and the score won a Globe the same night, months before the Academy's top prize went to another film.