E.T., one of Steven Spielberg’s first massive hits, came out in 1982. It was just his seventh film. His first, Duel, was a movie about a young guy in a cheap car who was being bullied on the road by a sociopathic, never-seen driver. It made a solid impression.
After that, he did Jaws in 1975, which was huge, Close Encounters Of the Third Kind in 1977, the underrated comedy 1941 in 1979 and the enormous hit Raiders Of The Lost Ark in 1981 before doing ET the following year.
It must be terribly difficult to find young children who can act convincingly and naturally, but they had high hopes for Henry Thomas, who already had one movie under his belt when he auditioned, Raggedy Man.