Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

E.T. screenwriter Melissa Mathison dies at 65

LOS ANGELES — Melissa Mathison, the screenwriter who crafted the enchanting worlds of iconic family films including E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, has died. She passed away yesterday (Nov 4) at age 65 from neuroendocrine cancer, her sister, Melinda Mathison Johnson, confirmed.

Harrison Ford and his wife Melissa Mathison arrives at the White House for an official dinner for the British Prime Minister hosted by President Clinton in Washington in 1998. AP file photo

Harrison Ford and his wife Melissa Mathison arrives at the White House for an official dinner for the British Prime Minister hosted by President Clinton in Washington in 1998. AP file photo

LOS ANGELES — Melissa Mathison, the screenwriter who crafted the enchanting worlds of iconic family films including E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, has died. She passed away yesterday (Nov 4) at age 65 from neuroendocrine cancer, her sister, Melinda Mathison Johnson, confirmed.

The LA native had a humble but high-profile start — her first credited work was in assistant roles on The Godfather: Part II and Apocalypse Now, before she broke out with her script for The Black Stallion, which was released as a feature-length film in 1979.

It was in 1976 on the set of Apocalypse Now that she met Harrison Ford, whom she would wed in 1983 and divorce in 2004 after multiple separations. She and Ford had two children, Georgia and Malcolm.

Throughout her over 30-year career, she often collaborated with producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall and worked with directors like Frank Oz on The Indian in the Cupboard and Martin Scorsese on Kundun.

But history will most fondly remember her for fleshing out the story of that friendly, homesick alien, E.T. The film, directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1982, would become one of the highest grossing of all time.

“Melissa had a heart that shined with generosity and love and burned as bright as the heart she gave E.T.,” said Spielberg in a statement.

The script for E.T. earned Mathison her first and only Oscar nomination. She lost out to John Briley’s Gandhi screenplay for the prize.

In a 1995 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mathison, who was one of five children born to a journalist father and a mother who sometimes worked in publicity, remembered the Hollywood Hills household in which she grew up as a place where independence and creativity were encouraged.

“We weren’t your mainstream `50s family,” she told the newspaper. “Both my parents had wonderful, eccentric, artistic friends who treated us as friends as well. How your mind worked was considered important.”

Mathison was a political science major at UC Berkeley when she took a leave to work as Francis Ford Coppola’s assistant on The Godfather, Part II, the Times reported in 1995.

Her last credited work is on Spielberg’s big-screen adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved novel The BFG, which comes out next year. AP

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.