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" When E.T. premiered in 1982, Henry Thomas, as Elliott, human best friend to the titular lost alien, instantly became the kid everyone wanted to be. Or as Thomas says now, the kid everyone &amp;quot;sort of&amp;quot; wanted to be. Thirty years later, E.T. has already undergone a controversial re-release, but now out on Blu-ray, it&amp;#039;s been restored to its original, glorious cut, sans computer animation and scrubbed shotguns. We talked to Thomas (who has since been on The Mentalist and CSI and in Gangs of New York) about the movie&amp;#039;s legacy, Steven Spielberg&amp;#039;s perfectionism, Super 8, and film sets as summer camp. ESQUIRE.COM: Are you tired of talking about this movie? HENRY THOMAS: [Laughs] No, I think I hit my stride about ten years ago. It&amp;#039;s just funny because, nowadays, you don&amp;#039;t expect to talk about a film thirty years later. I guess you&amp;#039;re setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment.  ESQ: I can&amp;#039;t tell if you&amp;#039;re being self-deprecating. HT: I was being self-deprecating, and trying to be funny at the same time.  ESQ: Do you really think there aren&amp;#039;t movies like E.T. anymore, in the sense that we talk about them years later? HT: I don&amp;#039;t know if there aren&amp;#039;t any films like E.T. anymore. I just feel that the industry has changed so much. There are so many outlets now. The idea of a film staying in theaters for a year is something of a fantasy today. ESQ: So instead of watching the new Blu-ray edition, last night I watched the version re-released in 2002. I was pretty disappointed when the walkie-talkies showed up. HT: I think a lot of people were disappointed with that. I remember when that happened, and from talking with Kathleen Kennedy and Steven Spielberg about this, I think there was a certain pressure that Steven felt he was under to be politically correct around the time of that release. I don&amp;#039;t think his heart was ever really in that version of it.  ESQ: Funny you say that. I was wondering if Spielberg was making some sort of anti-guns statement. HT: Well, it was around the time of 9/11\u2014 ESQ: And Columbine. HT: Columbine as well. I think that probably had something to do with it.  ESQ: It&amp;#039;s a movie that&amp;#039;s impacted a lot of kids over the years. What was it like to be a young kid going through that? HT: It was definitely not something I expected when I got chosen for the role. I didn&amp;#039;t expect any of the success to come about in the way that it did. It was the second film I had ever done. I got the part through a weird alignment of coincidences, and luck. Suddenly my phone was ringing and everybody wanted me in their film. It was kind of a roller-coaster ride for a few years there.  ESQ: Did you not understand because you were too young? HT: I understood why films were made, and if they made a lot of money, they were successful. All of these things I knew. As a ten-year-old boy, I didn&amp;#039;t really think a lot about finances or celebrity. I always viewed films as kind of what I imagined a summer camp to be like.       ESQ: And you made Spielberg cry in your audition? HT: Yes. I made everyone cry, and then I got the job. ESQ: What exactly were you doing? HT: I read a scene from some early version of the script, and then I was asked to do an improvisation. I think the gist of the improv was, &amp;quot;You found someone, and they&amp;#039;re going to take them away from you, and it&amp;#039;s your friend, and you really don&amp;#039;t want your friend to go away.&amp;quot; So I started crying, and really going for it I guess.  ESQ: Elliott seems a little troubled, even from the beginning of the movie. HT: I don&amp;#039;t know if he&amp;#039;s troubled, but the idea was always that this family was going through a divorce, and Elliot is having the hardest time with it, because he&amp;#039;s the guy in the middle. Also, Elliot is a bit of an outsider. When he finds E.T. and a friendship there, suddenly he becomes cool. Sort of cool.  ESQ: Did that resonate at all with you, growing up? HT: I don&amp;#039;t know if I was so much of an outsider until after I started doing films. That put me on the outside. I grew up in Texas, and I wasn&amp;#039;t the child of industry parents, and I didn&amp;#039;t have a lot of friends in the industry or anything like that.  ESQ: Being the child star of a blockbuster must have made you something of an outsider. HT: Sure. It definitely adds to your mystery. If it hadn&amp;#039;t been the film, it would have been something else, like my ears, or my accent or something.  ESQ: The movie is full of phenomenal performances mostly from kids. How did Spielberg get that? HT: He was really good at directing us. He was very specific in his notes. When you&amp;#039;re a kid, and you don&amp;#039;t have a lot of work under your belt, you need to feel confident about what you&amp;#039;re doing and whether or not the people in charge like what you&amp;#039;re doing. Steven was really good at explaining scenes in a way that kids could grasp a hold of it and give him what he wanted out of it. When we shot it, you got the feeling that he wanted to do everything, that he preferred to do everything himself. It would have been Steven playing all those roles if he could have.  ESQ: Was that perfectionism intimidating at all? HT: There&amp;#039;s a certain amount of pressure you feel when you get on a set. I think that combined with specific direction and a certain energy makes for a good director. When I think back on my time spent on the set of E.T., I just think about very boring day-to-day things. I remember the Kraft service cart. I loved those. My mom was always giving me a hard time because I had too many sweets. ESQ: You said it was a kind of vacation. What other movies have felt that way? HT: Gangs of New York was pretty good. I was in Rome for a year, and I was acting maybe an average of two days a week. Of course, I was complaining about it then. ESQ: Why were you complaining? HT: &amp;quot;Man, I&amp;#039;m over here, and I&amp;#039;m not working. They&amp;#039;ve just got me over here in Rome.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s what happens when you give an actor a job. They&amp;#039;ll just complain about it.  ESQ: Last question: I thought E.T. would have set off a huge trend in movies about kids befriending aliens, but there are only a few of them \u2014 Mac and Me, Super 8 a little bit. HT: I think people tried, but it&amp;#039;s like the conundrum of the sequel. How do you create another thing that captures the same relationship, but isn&amp;#039;t really ripping off the film? You can&amp;#039;t really, right? ESQ: What did you think of Super 8? HT: It didn&amp;#039;t really resonate with me. I saw some of the E.T. references, and the pop-culture nods. The thing about E.T. is that it&amp;#039;s a film about compassion, a film about friendship. The number-one film to me that captures the essence and the feel of E.T. and doesn&amp;#039;t cheapen it is The Iron Giant. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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