HENRY THOMAS

I can't stay in L.A. too long or it starts to grow on me in a bad way.

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.

Even if I had a tuxedo I wouldn't wear it to school.

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.

Carloads of tourists would photograph the family mailbox, and there was weird mail, death threats.

I have horses, I drive a truck, and I wear cowboy boots. First I'm a Texan.

I've got a lot of crazy plans.

It's really important to go back to where you come from.

I probably complicate things unnecessarily now just to give the illusion of professionalism.

I think it's great when girls are artistic.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

The one thing I've always done is to try not to overcomplicate anything.

If I can generate enough income, I'd like to get a castle, a historic castle that I can restore.

It's harder to laugh than to cry.

The idea of a film staying in theaters for a year is something of a fantasy today.

I was getting a lot of hassles from the public. Everybody recognized me.

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.

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.

My dad's family comes from the North, and my mother's family comes from somewhere around Carmarthenshire.