The puppet was an unwieldy nightmare

Though the E.T. puppet was a technical marvel, it proved quite the nightmare to operate!

The prop was bolted to the bottom of the living room's raised set, with a myriad of wiring littering the floor, to allow puppeteers to properly articulate E.T.

Considering they were beneath the set, the puppeteers had to navigate every scene by watching a series of TV monitors to ensure E.T. was reacting appropriately to the actors.

Spielberg also hired a mime specifically to do the character's arm movements after he decided that the mechanical arms were "too jerky".

He recalled: "When I saw the mechanical arms, they were really great but they were very jerky when they worked. The fingers would move, but almost too thoughtfully. And I felt E.T.’s got to have almost balletic arms, almost like the hands of a mime. So I just put it out there, can we hire a mime and we’ll put the E.T. hand makeup on a mime’s hand so the artist can really be artistic about picking things up and touching themselves and reaching out. So this is where this wonderful mime artist came to work with us."