Valerie Bertinelli stuns Drew Barrymore by revealing she dated Steven Spielberg

Drew Barrymore received the surprise of her life on Tuesday’s episode of her talk show when pal Valerie Bertinelli revealed that she once dated Steven Spielberg. 

The One Day at a Time actress, 64, opened up about dating the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial director, 78, for a few months as part of The Drew Barrymore Show’s recurring segment Memory Bank — and even brought along a black-and-white photograph of her and Steven attending the 1980 Oscars together to prove it. 

Barrymore, who began working with Spielberg as a child on E.T. and became so close with him that she asked him to be her dad, immediately identified Spielberg in the image. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Is that who I think it is?” She asked, turning to Bertinelli with a shocked look on her face. “Steven Spielberg?! WHAT?!”

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That’s when Bertinelli dropped the very casual bombshell that she “dated Steven for a New York minute” prior to meeting her first husband Eddie Van Halen. “WHAT?!” Barrymore screamed again. “How. Have we never. Talked about this?!” She exclaimed, prompting Bertinelli to reply, “I don’t know! I don’t know!” 

The Hot in Cleveland star explained that Spielberg asked her out on a date after she read for a role in his first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

“We were together for, I don’t know, three, four months?” Bertinelli recalled as Barrymore simply stared at her in slack-jawed wonder. “He still has a bowling shirt of mine — Steven — that you had in your house, and I didn’t get it out of the closet when we broke up,” she teased, “so I would like it back!”

Barrymore then asked if the pair had fun together while going steady. “I had a ball with him,” Bertinelli confirmed. “He invited me to the Academy Awards that year and I went and this was the year, I believe, that Sally Field won.” 

At the 1980 Oscars, Field won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the Martin Ritt-directed drama, Norma Rae. Bertinelli explained that she ran into Field, who was still holding her Oscar, in an elevator at the event.  

“I loved her forever and I couldn’t say anything. I was just like, ‘Congratulations,’” she said, making a show of whispering her remark to the fellow actress. “She was just beaming and beautiful… I don’t know which award that was — She’s won many — but, yeah, that was a lot of fun.”

Her fellow Drew Crew member Ross Mathews then jokingly interjected, “Well, did you date her too, Val? I mean, at this point, right?”

Bertinelli burst into laughter as Barrymore responded, “I am so enthralled right now.” 

The same year that she dated Spielberg, Bertinelli would go on to meet and begin dating Van Halen. The pair tied the knot a year later and were together for over two decades before their divorce was finalized in 2007.

Earlier this week, Bertinelli told Barrymore that she’s told her and Van Halen’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, not to release any biopics about the Grammy-winning rock band until after she’s dead. “Oh god, I hope they never do one of Van Halen,” Bertinelli confessed about the idea of a band biopic. “Make sure I’m dead. I told Wolfie, ‘Make sure I’m dead.’”

The Drew Barrymore Show airs weekdays on CBS.