One of the child actors who starred in E.T. revealed how much he made from the Steven Spielberg classic and it will probably shock you.
This comes as the 1982 film about an extra-terrestial who comes to Earth and is taken in by a group of kids is added to Netflix in the UK.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial joins a number of iconic films to have been added just since the start of the month, with Cape Fear, Heat, and Minority Report all now on the world’s biggest streaming service.
If you ask people who were left in tears by the sci-fi film, however, this is by far the most important film to have been added.
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Henry Thomas starred in the film as Elliot alongside a young Drew Barrymore as Gertie, with the classic film earning a score of 99 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and winning four Oscars off nine nominations.
Thomas has gone on to have carve quite a successful career for himself, appearing in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York alongside a star studded cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, and Stephen Graham.
Add to that the Netflix horror Fall of the House of Usher that came out in 2023, and he has done incredibly well for himself.
To this day though, he is still best known for his starring role in E.T. as the child Elliott who befriends the alien.
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Despite this, Thomas actually made an insanely low amount of money from the film, stating in an interview that he actually made the minimum wage he possibly could.
Off a budget of $10.5 million, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial made $797.3 million at the box office – the equivalent today of a film making $2.6 billion.
This would put it behind just Avatar and Avengers: Endgame in the all time list. Thomas said to The Mirror in 2012: “Despite popular belief I didn’t make much money from the movie. I was 10 years old, remember. I basically got the minimum wage.
“Universal and Spielberg did really well. The minions had to go back to work. I do getresidual cheques, though, which is great. And I got it better than E.T... he’s off in a box somewhere.”
Whilst he has not disclosed the exact amount, even by today's standards he wouldn't have made much.
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The daily SAG-AFTRA rate for minors is $1,000 a day for films budgeted over $2 million. Filming on E.T. took roughly three months, meaning that the nearly billion dollar film would likely have paid him roughly $90,000 for his troubles if filmed today.
Reports from the early 80s suggest that daily rates went up to $315 a day for actors following a strike in 1980, however.
If this was the case for Thomas, then he would have made just under $10,000.
In the same interview with The Mirror, he said there were times he'd felt regret at starring in the film, stating that it made it near-impossible for him to live a normal life for a while.
He added: “I was a shy kid, and being approached by adults all the time just freaked me out.
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“I was like a circus freak. But the only time I had to deal with it was when I left the house. So I stopped leaving the house. I became an 11-year-old hermit.”
He separately stated in an interview with The Guardian that his family were not ‘well equipped’ for the fame the movie brought.
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial is available to watch on Netflix now.
Topics: Netflix, Drew Barrymore, TV and Film, Film, Money, Nostalgia
Michael Slavin