Valerie Bertinelli and Steven Spielberg have a surprising history.
“I dated Steven for a New York minute,” Bertinelli, 64, revealed in a Drew Barrymore Show clip shared via Instagram on Tuesday, April 15. “It was obviously before I met [ex-husband Eddie Van Halen], I went up to go read for Raiders of the Lost Ark, and then he asked me out on a date.”
Bertinelli showed the audience a throwback black-and-white photo of her and Spielberg, now 78, holding hands.
“We were together for, I don’t know, three [or] four months and he still has a bowling shirt of mine, Bertinelli recalled, before addressing the famed filmmaker directly. “Steven, that you had in your house, and I didn’t get it out of the closet when we broke up, so I would like it back.”
Drew Barrymore was the breakout star of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — and she left a particularly significant impression on the film’s director. Steven Spielberg, who produced and directed a then-7-year-old Barrymore in the 1982 film, revealed during an appearance at New York City’s TCM Film Festival on Saturday, January 25, that the actress, 49, inspired […]
Drew Barrymore was dumbfounded by the news that Bertinelli dated Spielberg, who famously directed Barrymore in the iconic film E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial when the daytime host was just 7 years old.
“How have we never talked about that?” Barrymore, 50, wondered. “Did you guys have fun?”
Bertinelli confirmed she “had a ball” dating the famed director.
“He invited me to the Academy Awards that year, and I went, and this was the year I believe that Sally Field won, and she was in the elevator with her Oscar and I’m a huge Sally Field fan,” Bertinelli recalled. “I loved her forever and I couldn’t say anything.”
Field won two Best Actress Oscars throughout her career, one in 1980 for Norma Rae and another for 1985 for Places in the Heart.
“I was just like, ‘Congratulations,’” the actress continued of her run-in with Field. “She was just beaming and beautiful and she won the — I don’t know which award that was. She’s won many, but, yeah, that was a lot of fun.”
The king of entertainment! From Indiana Jones to Jaws, Steven Spielberg is one of the most well-known and successful directors of all time. The E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial director was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in December 1946, though his family moved to Phoenix 10 years later, where he spent his formative years. Spielberg’s interest in film […]
Barrymore added, “I am so enthralled right now.”
Following her swift jaunt with Spielberg, the actress was married to Van Halen — who died at age 65 in 2020 — from 1981 to 2007. They share one child, a son named Wolfgang, born in March 1991. Bertinelli moved on with Tom Vitale, whom she married in 2011. The pair divorced in 2022.
More recently, Bertinelli was in a relationship with Mike Goodnough, taking their romance public in April 2024. By November of that same year, they reportedly split.
“I’m irreversibly changed by him for the better,” Bertinelli shared via Instagram in March. “I know I am becoming a much stronger and more benevolent human for having met him and spent time with him.”
