EPISODE SUMMARY:
A gifted actress and best-selling author, Dee Wallace’s successful career has graced the screens of millions for decades. In today’s episode, we sat down with Dee to discuss the start of her career, getting cast in E.T., her experience working on horror films and connecting with characters, and the concept of getting back to zero.
First, we asked Dee about how she initially started acting. She told us that at first, despite her mother being in the industry, she didn’t have an interest in acting. Dee wanted to be a dancer and was taking ballet classes. However, after being told by her dancer teacher she would never be great at dancing, she decided to change her path. After getting a degree in teaching, Dee moved alone to New York to pursue a career in acting, and she credits some of her success to her naivety. At the time, she was naïve, and while some may see that as a negative, she views those who are naïve as not being afraid but rather having blind faith, which allows people to chase their dreams without restraint. Dee also shared a story about how she wrote a letter to Prince and ended up singing in front of him.
Getting noticed in the industry by casting directors, especially in LA, can be a major challenge for actors. When asked how she combatted this, Dee explained how she would use cookies to gain experience. She would bake homemade chocolate chip cookies, package them, and would pull up to the guard gates at casting sites saying she had a delivery. After being let in, Dee would then hand out cookies to casting directors as a way to get on the radar. In fact, while handing out cookies one day, she happened to run into the head of casting at Universal. While they talked, he received a phone call saying the actress meant to play a small waitress role was sick. The part ended up going to Dee, who was offered the job on the spot. While talking about roles, Dee also said that she does not play into the idea that older women can’t be in Hollywood. Her own career is proof of this, with her working on several projects currently and having no intent to stop or slow down.
One of Dee’s most famous roles is as the mother in E.T., and she told us that rather than audition, she was actually offered the role upfront. After seeing her performance in previous auditions, Steven Spielberg liked her energy and called to give her the role. At that point, she had been acting professionally for 3-4 years, so to receive such an iconic role was a huge step in her career. Dee enjoyed the experience of working on E.T., especially when it came to working with the child actors on set. She shared that since the kids were so young, Spielberg wanted to make sure that the statues they had of E.T. could move and interact with the children. Dee recalled memories of Drew Barrymore sitting in the corner and interacting with one of the versions of E.T. Dee also spoke about how one of the things she loved most on E.T. was the collaborative environment fostered by Spielberg. Instead of simply giving orders, Spielberg wanted the actors to be a part of the creative process. By doing this, Dee believes that he made the movie better, for when everyone is able to bring their own skills and idea sot the table, magic happens.
For some of her favorite projects over the years, Dee shared that while she has a special place in her heart for them all, she loves The Howling, 10, The Frighteners, and E.T. Audiences have been able to resonate with E.T. for decades, connecting to the film’s themes of truth, heart, love, friendship, and working together. Dee believes it’s these themes that have kept the movie so popular over the years. When connecting to a film that she’s working on, Dee said that rather than connect with the story, she connects to the character. For example, in The Howling, her story was about finding light in the dark, and in Cujo, her character’s sole purpose was to protect her son no matter what. We also spoke to Dee about her healing practices and some of her views on trauma. She explained that everyone goes through hard times, but the more you dwell on them, the harder it is to move on from your past. It is most important to use your past to live the life you want to now. One of the ways Dee does this is with the concept of “getting back to zero”. Zero is the point you start from when building the life you want, and even if you’re starting from nothing, it is better to do so than trying to rectify everything in your past. You have to retrain your brain and soul to not focus on the past but to instead think of and perceive a world that matches the life you want to live.
Dee also spoke about how our self-worth is established far earlier than we think. From the age of eight, our self-esteem, view of ourselves, and view of how the world sees us is already locked in our brains. What you are taught from a baby to age eight is what you tend to build your life around, and as an adult, it’s important to use whatever you learned in order to build a life that suits your personal wants and needs. Finally, we asked what the best way to contact Dee is, and she told us to go to her website, iamdeewallace.com. People can contact her via her site as well as find links to her radio show, best-selling books, and more.
Dee Wallace
More than four decades ago, Dee Wallace, a gifted young actress from the wilds of Kansas, dropped into Hollywood with hopeful expectations. Two years later she landed the role of a lifetime and walked onto a soundstage knowing that playing Mary, the smart, funny young mother of Michael, Elliott and Gertie, was going to change her life.
Born into a loving but impoverished family, Deanna Bowers was the bright, beautiful peacemaker of an alcoholic father and a mother who put aside her own dreams in order to support her husband and maintain a happy, stable home. Like so many others who will relate to her childhood, Dee grew up under the push-pull pressure of wanting to perform and make her father proud – and happy enough not to drink – and at the same time remaining quiet and sweet so as not to give family anger a reason to surface. With welcome clarity and honesty and without a trace of self-pity, she writes about these experiences as she was growing up, including her father’s tragic suicide, and then shows how, until examined and reconciled, they kept cropping up again and again in her personal and professional life. Even readers whose early lives were less dramatic and ultimately less tragic will be guided to recognize these same self-destructive patterns, and cheered to know their own bright lights, once uncovered and freed from fear, still burn.
Indeed, even with the unprecedented critical and popular success of E.T. and stellar reviews of her performance in it, the next years did not bring the expected acclaim and financial security. Rather, they brought her the opportunity to leave fear behind as she somehow lived through the loss of her soul-mate, the knowledge of perfect love as she welcomed her long-awaited and only child, and the time to look at the life she had created and the ability to re-connect with her inner light and begin to create something new: herself. It wasn’t the red carpet life she had expected, but it was so much better.
Wallace has never stopped working in film, television and stage, and has more than 130 films and scores of television roles and series to her credit. She is currently among a handful of in-demand actresses for guest starring roles in TV drama. Her irresistible presence on speaking forums and two top internet radio shows have made her a sought-after inspirational speaker, spiritual teacher and healer.
Dee is a true tour de force, working with every kind of co-star from Cujo to Lassie, as well as countless directors, producers and some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including Peter Jackson, Wes Craven, Joe Dante, Stephen King and Blake Edwards. Ms. Wallace became an icon in the role that would define motherhood for a generation, as Mary in Stephen Speilberg’s ET: The Extraterrestrial. Her 150 films range from some of the scariest to some of the funniest ever made, including Cujo, The Howling, 10, The Frighteners and Critters.
She has starred in four television series and more than 400 commercials and is one of Hollywood’s most sought-after TV guest stars including appearances in Grey’s Anatomy; Cold Case; Without a Trace; Ghost Whisperer; My Name is Earl; Criminal Minds, Saving Grace, Law and Order, and The Office. A beloved acting coach, she is also an internationally known healer, with two global radio shows and a series of healing seminars. Her insight into the joy of “conscious creation” was one of the reasons she was led to share her knowing with a larger audience through Bright Light.
In her third book, Bright Light (O-Books), she takes readers along on an emotional, spiritual and professional journey, but even as we cheer for her triumphs and grieve for her unbearable losses, she doesn’t allow us to sit on the sidelines as merely an audience to her life. Rather she uses her journey as a metaphor for always expanding the lessons she experienced in her own life to a larger wisdom valuable for all of us. Her gifted writing is inclusive, reaching out to connect with readers as with unflinching honesty she takes responsibility for the manifestation of pain and disappointments in her life, as well as the creation of love and happiness for its joys and successes. And she beckons her readers, who almost imperceptibly recognize their own journey, to learn from the spiritual lessons, which are the focus of each chapter.
Now, internationally known for her five series, and over 250 films/TV movie credits to her acting career, as well as hit series such as NBC’s GRIMM as Monroe’s mother as well as joining the cast of ABC’s The Whispers (reuniting with her ET director, Spielberg) and in 2014 Dee proudly announced the release of two new e-books: Wake Up Now! A Book of Universal Truths and Getting Stuff: Everything is Possible.
In 2014, Dee and her daughter, Gabrielle Stone (Speak No Evil, Stray, etc.) have followed in the footsteps of other famous mother and daughter teams by appearing together in the recent release of Zombie Killers: Elephant’s Graveyard with Billy Zane.
As a much sought after speaker, Dee has spoken at numerous national and international venues and outlets including TED Talks, the Love and Harmony Forum in Japan, The Dillon Lecture Series, Unity Temple, The Kansas Film Commission, and asked to speak in China, New Zealand, Amsterdam, Australia, England and all across the United States and Canada. Dee has appeared on every major news and talk show and has been featured on E! True Hollywood Stories, and Oprah.
In her new release, BORN, she expands the concepts of Law of Attraction exponentially and awesomely simplifies everything you think you know about the power of Self-Creation. BORN is a book about Directing Energy, Knowing, Neutrality, Self-Actualization, Knowing You are the Power, Claiming Your Desires, and Easy Creation. Wallace’s BORN is a powerful book about how Spirituality, Brain Science, and Religion are all teaching the same principles, and how you can easily use them in creating your life. In addition, Dee is releasing a BuppaLaPaloo & the I LOVE MEs the most powerful little bear on the planet as a children’s companion piece to BORN. The lessons of BuppaLaPaloo books are centered on self-love, empowerment, choice, and action for children at the beginning stages of defining themselves, which define their lives.
In this episode, we discuss…
- [0:01] Bossa Bars
- [0:54] Guest Introduction
- [6:13] Start of Interview
- [8:09] Journey of Dee’s Career
- [12:04] Baking Cookies to Get Noticed in Hollywood
- [16:13] Getting Cast in E.T.
- [24:26] Some of Dee’s Favorite Projects
- [26:33] Working on Horror Films
- [30:29] Getting Back to the Zero
- [35:09] How We See Ourselves
- [39:19] How to Get in Touch with Dee
- [42:18] Closing Thoughts
- [43:27] Outro
Useful Resources:
Dee’s Website I [https://iamdeewallace.com/]
Dee IMDb I [https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0908914/]
Dee’s Facebook I [https://www.facebook.com/DeeWallaceOfficialFB]
Dee’s Twitter I [https://twitter.com/Dee_Wallace]
Dee’s Books
BORN I [https://iamdeewallace.com/product/bornbook/]
Bright Light I [https://iamdeewallace.com/product/bright-light-autographed-personalized-2/]
BuppaLaPaloo I [https://iamdeewallace.com/product/buppalapaloo-signed-copy/]
Conscious Creation I [https://iamdeewallace.com/product/conscious-creation/]
Getting Stuff I [https://iamdeewallace.com/product/getting-stuff-hardcopy/]
The Big E I [https://iamdeewallace.com/product/big-e/]
Wake Up Now I [https://iamdeewallace.com/product/wake-now/]
Dee’s Radio Show
Conscious Creation Radio Show I [https://www.blogtalkradio.com/consciouscreation]
TRY BOSSA BARS FOR MENOPAUSE AND USE CODE “HOTCOOL10” FOR 10% OFF AT https://bossabars.com/ !
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