Steven Spielberg said 7-year-old Drew Barrymore asked him to be her dad while filming 'E.T' and he had to say no

• Drew Barrymore told New York magazine that Steven Spielberg was one of her only parental figures.
• At age 7, she asked the director to be her dad, but he said no. He later agreed to be her godfather.

"E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" is a movie imbued with childlike wonder. On the set of the 1982 sci-fi hit, the director, Steven Spielberg, tried hard to keep Drew Barrymore's alive.

Barrymore was 7 when "E.T." became an instant blockbuster and the highest-grossing film of all time, catapulting her into the spotlight.

In an interview with New York magazine's E. Alex Jung, Barrymore reflected on her tumultuous childhood and the bond with Spielberg that kept her afloat.

Spielberg was "the only person in my life to this day that ever was a parental figure," Barrymore told the magazine.

The director took pains to conceal the realities of the film set from Barrymore, describing a time when she noticed the men operating the animatronic alien E.T. and asked Spielberg to kick them out.

"I didn't want to burst the bubble," Spielberg told New York. "So I simply said, 'It's okay, E.T. is so special E.T. has eight assistants. I am the director, I only have one."

Spielberg decided to shoot the film in "strict continuity" to keep the magic alive for Barrymore even when the cameras weren't rolling.

When she ate lunch with E.T., assistants were on hand to make the alien react to the child as she told him her secrets.

Amid an unstable childhood — Barrymore was raised by her mother, and described her father as an abusive alcoholic who left her mother when she was young — Spielberg was a beacon of normalcy.

She stayed with him on weekends, and he got her a cat named Gertie, after her "E.T." character.

Once, she asked Spielberg to be her dad. He said no.

Already, Barrymore was being drawn into the intoxicating adult world that would land her in rehab by age 13.

"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 said. "Yet I felt very helpless because I wasn't her dad. I could only kind of be a consigliere to her."

He agreed to be her godfather instead.