I grew up in a rural area, I was from kind of a poor family and my parents weren't showbiz people. But going back was strange, and perhaps stranger for the other students.
Henry Thomas
I probably complicate things unnecessarily now just to give the illusion of professionalism.
Mike Flanagan wants to work with me again, and I would love to work with him again.
It was like that for the first six months after 'E.T.' was in cinemas. I'd go out and get mobbed. I was a shy kid, and being approached by adults all the time just freaked me out.
I don't know if there aren't any films like 'E.T.' anymore. I just feel that the industry has changed so much. There are so many outlets now.
The hardest thing about being a kid actor is just kind of separating 'this is my professional life' and 'this is my kid life.' That was always the hard part for me.
I was highly sensitive and still am, but as a kid I could tap into my emotional state rather easily.
I have horses, I drive a truck, and I wear cowboy boots. First I'm a Texan.
Carloads of tourists would photograph the family mailbox, and there was weird mail, death threats.
It's harder to laugh than to cry.
Even if I had a tuxedo I wouldn't wear it to school.
It's really important to go back to where you come from.
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'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.
I think it's great when girls are artistic.
I was getting a lot of hassles from the public. Everybody recognized me.
I don'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't the child of industry parents, and I didn't have a lot of friends in the industry or anything like that.
Whenever I have an opportunity, I catch a train and go to Wales and hire a car and drive around.
If I can generate enough income, I'd like to get a castle, a historic castle that I can restore.
The idea of a film staying in theaters for a year is something of a fantasy today.
I figured out that I could think of my childhood dog that had died, and I could bring myself to tears. So I used that poor dead dog for several years until it just didn't work anymore, and I had to find something else.
I would inevitably get the girls who were interested in me because I was the guy from E.T. It was kind of tough. I can't deny ever capitalizing upon it but on the whole in my teens I was pretty virtuous.
I can't stay in L.A. too long or it starts to grow on me in a bad way.
I've got a lot of crazy plans.
My dad's family comes from the North, and my mother's family comes from somewhere around Carmarthenshire.
Many times you walk into a room and people have already made up their minds. But it's always good to have something great associated with you.
The one thing I've always done is to try not to overcomplicate anything.
I got so tired of everybody talking about 'Stranger Things,' I think I developed a mental block against watching it.
Of course there have been times I regretted being the kid in 'E.T.' My world went completely crazy. I was that stupid kind of famous, where you can't go anywhere.
Seeing a time period captured in film, you know, it does make you feel nostalgic.
I remember, when I was a kid in the '70s and '80s, the '50s were really cool. And then the '60s were really cool. And then the '70s.
My son, who is 7, he passed a car in a parking lot that was probably a 1998 model, and he said, 'Wow, Dad, look at that old car.' I was looking around for an old car, and I realized that my old car maybe stops at 1965.
