The mom from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial turned 75 just before Christmas and she is as sparkling and timeless as the iconic film. Kansas City, Kansas, native Dee Wallace went to Hawthorne (now Betram Caruthers) Elementary, Northwest Junior High, and graduated from Wyandotte High School. She earned a teaching degree at University of Kansas, then taught drama briefly at Washington High School in Kansas City, Kansas, before leaving for New York to pursue acting.
Wallace has appeared in nearly 200 films, working with legendary producers and directors, including Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Wes Craven, Stephen King, and Blake Edwards. In addition to her role as Mary in E.T., the second most-watched movie of all time (after Titanic), Wallace also appeared in many popular horror films, including The Hills Have Eyes, The Howling, and Cujo. Recent films include Every Other Holiday, Rob Zombie’s 3 From Hell, and Jingle Belle.
On top of her acting, Wallace has a successful career as a healer and hosts a live radio call-in show at 9 a.m. Pacific Time every Sunday morning.
Wallace recently chatted with IN Kansas City by phone from her home in Woodland Hills, California, where she lives with her husband and her beloved rescue dog, Freedom. Her daughter, Gabrielle Stone, lives five minutes away and in August gave birth to Wallace’s first grandson.
What is your New Year’s Resolution for 2024?
Keep creating. Create with lots of love. That’s my goal every single day and certainly for the new year.
How do you go about that, in practical terms?
You have to be very clear about what you want. Love yourself enough to know that you can create it and start asking, “How can I?” Then take action.
Are some parts of that—knowing what you want, loving yourself, taking action—easier for you and some parts more of a struggle?
I would answer that by saying I know that struggle and worry are negative prayers. You are literally praying for what you don’t want. I choose not to struggle, and I choose to create easily. I choose to love myself so much that I want to give me everything that I want.
I’ve been told by friends who are worriers that it adds to their stress when people tell them not to worry, because they can’t help it. It isn’t a choice.
Oh, bullshit! Sorry. That’s not true. Everything’s a choice. We were put on this plane to practice free will. Nobody can think a thought for us, feel a feeling for us, or hold a belief for us. We can choose to worry, or we can choose to know that we are the creators of ourselves.
If you step forward and take care of things, there’s nothing to fricking worry about, is there?
Have you always been an optimist, or are you a recovered pessimist?
I was never a pessimist. My daddy called me Bright Light. It’s the name of one of my books.
I’ve lived through two suicides in my family—my father and my brother. My dad was a severe alcoholic. So, you know, crummy things happen in life.
My mother, Maxine Bowers, was a huge figure in Kansas City. She ran Cancer Action for years and years. She lived into her late 80s. She was powerful, she was loving. I learned everything from her and am everything I am because of her.
‘‘See, if we keep telling our story, we keep living our story. That is what happened to me. What I did with it and am doing with it today is what’s important.”
You were in high school when your dad killed himself. How did you deal with that at the time and are you still dealing with it?
No, what’s the point?
See, if we keep telling our story, we keep living our story. That is what happened to me. What I did with it and am doing with it today is what’s important. So, I can keep saying, “My dad committed suicide and that’s why I can’t . . .,” “My dad was an alcoholic, and we were really poor so that’s why I can’t . . .,” or I can say, “That’s what I grew up with. Now, I am going to create the successful, happy person I want to be.”
I notice that you talk about your mother more than your dad.
My mother is probably Saint Maxine up there right now. And I’ve got to say, my dad, with all of his challenges, taught me a lot about naivete and fun and the beauty of the holidays, the beauty of family.
You had another tragedy when your second husband, Christopher Stone, died suddenly at a young age.
Yes. He died of a heart attack when my daughter was almost seven. When my daughter was in high school, she was acting out, and she said, “Well, your dad didn’t die when you were seven years old” and blah blah blah. I stood up and looked at her and said, “This is the last time you will ever use your father to make less of yourself.” She says it is one of the moments that changed her life.
That’s powerful.
I mean, let’s all stop using the reasons why we can’t and start asking every day, “How can I be more love? How can I be more success? How can I be happier? How can I do good things in this world?” Instead of focusing on all the BS that all of us—all of us!—have in our lives.
On your podcast you sometimes talk about moments where you become a channel, when you suddenly see or know something about someone in the room. Do you remember the first time that happened to you?
Yeah, I’ve been channeling since I was a little girl. All kids do. All people do—they just learn to turn it off. The first time, I was seven or eight and I woke up and I went in and woke my mom up and said, “Something’s wrong at Grandma’s house.” So we called Grandma and nobody answered. God bless my mom, she had to be at work at 7 a.m. but we got in a car and drove over there, and the cat had jumped up and turned on the gas burners on the stove. Grandma was OK, but who knows if she would have been fine in the morning.
After my father’s suicide, my father as a light visited me in my bedroom and gave me messages. This has been going on all my life. It’s just a normal natural thing for me, and it is for a lot of kids. When they talk about their imaginary friends, they are channeling. It’s just agreeing to have access to all the information that is available to all of us. It’s just energy. Everything is energy, so if you’re not open to it, you’re shutting yourself off from a lot of the experience of life.
Do you think your ability to channel makes it easier to slip into a character when you act?
Oh, you know, honey, everybody has their own technique. If you’re an English actor, usually you break everything down, you study the part. I don’t do that. It doesn’t work for me. But nobody is going to say our brilliant English actors aren’t brilliant because they don’t channel the role.
Have you ever worked on a film where you changed your character based on feelings that came to you through channeling?
Well, I don’t change anything because that’s the way I work. I was Mary in ET. I was Donna in Cujo. I wasn’t Dee playing them. I was them.
Do you ever find when you’re playing a scene that you start to go in a completely different direction than the director laid out?
Every director I’ve ever worked with embraces that. That’s when you find gold on a set. It’s when things happen that you least expect, and everyone is open to going with it.
What are your memories of growing up in Kansas City, Kansas?
We lived in two different houses. I went to Wyandotte High School. I loved school. I was a cheerleader; I was homecoming queen. It was where I went to experience my own power.
I attended Washington Avenue Methodist Church, which became Trinity. That was a big part of my upbringing. My mom, who was a wonderful actress in Kansas City theater, directed all the plays and would perform half-hour readings at our church. Watching her is when I decided I wanted to do this.
I have dear, dear memories of my grandmother, Betty Bowers, who was really the foundation of our church and helped raise me because my mom had to work all the time, since we were very poor. We lived for a long time in a duplex with my grandma, they lived up above and we lived below. I had really fond memories of my youth group and Donna Robinson, who took such good care of me through the youth group, and we became friends.
What was your neighborhood like?
The first thing that comes to mind is the beautiful trees. We had such beautiful trees in our neighborhood.
One thing I’ve really gone out of the way to do living out here [in California] is getting to know my neighbors. You know, taking cookies around at Christmas. I know all our neighbors, we’re all very close. I live on a cul-de-sac. The kids come to me to get Popsicles and Fudgsicles all the time. I’ve been in the same house for over 40 years, which is a very Midwestern quality, as you know. The people in the Midwest—I’m really proud to be one of them.
Interview condensed and minimally edited for clarity.