Steven Spielberg's approach to child actors revealed

Child actors are generally treated with sensitivity. But not apparently on Steven Spielberg sets.

Seth Rogen, who worked with him in The Fablemans, told Esquire that although the film has an ensemble cast of young stars, he is not particularly "sensitive" to them.

“On the set of ‘The Fabelmans,’ I noticed there’s a lot of kids in the movie, and Steven Spielberg is kind of famous for working with kids. I would notice that when he was directing the kids of the movie, he treated them like any other actor, in that I mean he was not particularly sensitive towards them, to the point that I commented on it,” the actor shared.

“I went to him and I was like, ‘I thought you would be really nice to them.’ And he was like, ‘Kids always listen to the mean teacher more than they listen to the nice teacher.’ And I thought that was really interesting,” he concluded.

Josh Brolin, another star who worked under Steven in The Goonies as a child artist, had a similar impression of him.

“I was on the set, reading all this stuff with these tiny wooden trailers. I came to Steven at some point, we were in one of the tunnels, and I said, ‘Hey, Steven, can I talk to you for a second?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, sure,’” the Dune star told SiriusXM’s Literally! With Rob Lowe podcast.

He continued, “So I said [to Steven], ‘Hey, don’t you think that the tunnels kind of represent my mother’s womb? And what if we film me climbing up the tunnel, but really I’m trying to cut that emotional umbilical cord of my mother, and I could have tears coming down my face?’ 

"I went into this whole thing, and I was getting all excited because he was nodding his head, and then I waited,” Brolin continued.

“And then he looked at me and he said, ‘Why don’t you just act? Just say the words on the page, you’ll be fine.’ And I could have been like, ‘Dick!’ But I didn’t, I was like, ‘Oh, totally. I got it,’” Josh concluded.