Expected to fetch up to $1 million dollars at auction, this original animatronic head of E.T. is a collector’s masterpiece.
Weathered, worn, and full of handmade details, the animatronic head from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was used extensively throughout the beloved film.
Designed by the late Carlo Rambaldi, the model featured some truly innovative and detailed aspects, like expressive, moveable eyes, pulsating veins, and nostrils that open and close. All of it made for a realistic and lovable character in the classic Spielberg movie.
The auction begins on December 14, with an opening bid of $800,000.
Read more about the beloved character and its inception below.
“This original production animatronic is composed of a metal frame with a foam latex outer skin. A series of cables control the movement of the head, including eye movement, lips, eyebrows, forehead, and even the tongue.
It could open and close the nostrils of the nose and activate the pulsation of the veins and the jugular in many close-up scenes.
Upon accepting the project during the pre-production of the film, with time pressing, Rambaldi set upon finalizing the design for the E.T. figure.
Spielberg sent over early drawings, which had been rendered by production illustrator Ed Verreaux who had worked with Spielberg on the conceptualization of the new character at the director’s Malibu beach house on the weekends.
Spielberg sent over photos of poet Carl Sandburg, theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, and author Ernest Hemingway for Rambaldi to study, stating: “I love their eyes, can we make E.T’s eyes as frivolous, wise and as sad as those three icons?”
But Daniela Rambaldi remembers her father wanting to give the character more innocence and finding the reference for the design of the beloved alien’s eyes from the blue eyes of the family’s Himalayan cat “Kikka,” which Rambaldi considered “very innocent” and “a good element for the soul of E.T.”
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