Steven Spielbergis opening up about balancing work and family — and how he once “sacrificed a great franchise” to spend more time with his wife and children.
“There were several films I chose not to make. They offered meHarry Potter,” the acclaimed filmmaker, 76, recalled in a recent chat withRRRdirectorS.S. Rajamoulifor Reliance Entertainment.
Spielberg explained he"chose to turn down the firstHarry Potter"so he could “spend that next year and a half with my family, my young kids growing up.”
“So I sacrificed a great franchise, which today looking back I’m very happy to have done, to be with my family,” he added.
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Daniel Radcliffe inHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone(2001); Steven Spielberg.Warner Bros. Pictures; JB Lacroix/WireImage
Back in 2010, Collider reported that Warner Bros.' then-presidentAlan Horntold theLos Angeles Timeshe “did think it would be worthwhile for Steven Spielberg to direct” the firstHarry Potterfilm, 2001’sHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and thatthe studio had offered it to him.
“But one of the notions of Dreamworks' and Steven’s was, ‘Let’s combine a couple of the books, let’s make it animated,’ and that was because of the [visual effects and] Pixar had demonstrated that animated movies could be extremely successful,” continued Horn, per Collider.
Spielberg’s new semi-autobiographic filmThe Fabelmans, which he co-wrote, isup for seven awardsat this year’sOscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Steven Spielberg and family.Craig Barritt/Getty
In his conversation with Rajamouli, 49, Spielberg said the “personal meaning about [how the conflict between] art and family will tear you in half happened to me later, after I had already established myself as a filmmaker, as a working director.”
“The choice I had to make in taking a job that would move me to another country for four or five months where I wouldn’t see my family every day … that was really a rending, ripping kind of experience, the choices I had to make,” he said.
While the iconic director isnow a proud father of seven, he didn’t always want children. In fact, it was his experience working on 1982’sE.T.that opened him up to the idea of parenthood.
“I didn’t want to have kids because it was not a kind of equation that made sense for me as I went from movie to movie to movie, script to script,” Spielberg toldVarietylast year at a celebration for the iconic film’s40th anniversary. “It never occurred to me till halfway throughE.T.: I was a parent on that film. I was literally feeling like I was very protective ofHenry [Thomas]and [Robert MacNaughton] and my whole cast, and especiallyDrew [Barrymore], who was only 6 years old.”
“And I started thinking, ‘Well,maybe this could be my real life someday,’ " he added. “It was the first time that it occurred to me that maybe I could be a dad. And maybe in a way, a director is a dad, or a mom … I really felt that that would be my big production.”
source: people.com
