Dee Wallace began her acting career on television appearing in episodes of The Streets of San Francisco, Starsky & Hutch, and Police Woman, before appearing in the box-office horror hit film The Hills Have Eyes (1977). In 1981, she played a leading role in the horror film The Howling opposite her husband Christopher Stone. They later starred together in Cujo (1983) based on Stephen King‘s 1981 novel of the same name.
In 1982, Wallace went on to star as the popular mom, Mary Taylor, in Steven Spielberg‘s science-fiction film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). The film became the highest-grossing film of all time—a record held for 11 years. She has earned further recognition as a scream queen for starring in several horror films. You’ll most likely recognize her playing the role of mom in a variety of films and television shows on numerous Hallmark Channel movies and 9-1-1 on ABC-TV. Wallace’s most recent productions include The Legend of Catclaws Mountain, Stream, and the Emmy Awarding winning series, The Bay.
Today, Wallace is also a best-selling author and a multi-nationally respected authority on the art of self-creation for over 30 years, having authored five books on the subject of self-creation, Conscious Creation, The Big E!, Bright Light, Getting Stuff and Wake Up Now!. BORN and BuppaLaPaloo are her sixth and seventh offerings.
“I eat well. I work out with a trainer twice a week. I power walk my doggie daily.”
As a much sought-after speaker, Wallace has spoken at numerous national and international venues and outlets including TED Talks, the Love and Harmony Forum in Japan, The Dillon Lecture Series, Unity Temple, The Kansas Film Commission, and asked to speak in China, New Zealand, Amsterdam, Australia, England and all across the U. S. and Canada. She has appeared on every major news and talk show and has been featured on E! True Hollywood Stories, and Oprah.
Wallace continues to conduct a weekly call-in radio show, with over 600 episodes, from her home in Woodland Hills, Calif. via phone and in person, as well as monthly webinars and private sessions worldwide. Like the title character in the hit film that she stars in, she teaches us how to truly “get back home.”
Alternative Medicine (AM): You’ve had a long and successful acting career known by so many for your role in that big blockbuster science fiction film E.T. the Extraterrestrial. I would imagine that role still must hold many great memories for you.
Ms. Wallace: It does, and it continues to make memories. I have people come by whenever I do a personal appearance and tell me amazing stories of how that film changed their life. A beautiful mother once came up with tears in her eyes and said, “Miss Wallace, you’re a part of a miracle in my life,” and proceeded to tell me about her son, who was 10 years old and autistic. She had never heard him speak and she took him to see the re-release of E.T. On the way home, he said every line E.T. said in the movie. I hear stories like that all the time about how this movie just reaches into the heart and soul and wakes people up in in a way I have never witnessed before.
AM: Is it correct to say the movie may have changed your life too?
Ms. Wallace: I don’t know if it changed my life, but it didn’t change who I am. It definitely changed my life in continuing to move me in different ways. Once I did E.T. people knew who I was and I was a better bet for people. That’s what every actor wants. I have been blessed with a very full continuing career in films and television.
AM: You’ve also gained recognition, as the scream queen.
Ms. Wallace: Oh, the scream queen, yes.
AM: You starred in numerous horror films, and you’ve got a new one coming out, called Stream, which is in theaters this summer.
Ms. Wallace: I’ve done four films so far this year, most are not released yet. I’m really lucky that I can bounce between the horror films and nice family comedies, the Hallmark kind of movies. I feel blessed that I haven’t been stuck in any kind of specific genre and I get to explore so many different characters that are brought to me. That’s what really, I think, stokes every actor.
I just finished a character, but initially said to the director, I really want to do this but I don’t know if I can anymore. Energetically, physically and emotionally, it was another Cujo type film which I did 40 years ago. But I finished it. I did all my stunts except falling down the stairs which I wouldn’t have done back then either, and I said to the director, the greatest gift that came out of that was that I saw I could still do it.
AM: You’ve also had a role in The Bay, the daytime soap drama, in which you received a daytime Emmy nomination and been in several recent episodes of 9-1-1.
Ms. Wallace: Yes, I recur as the mom in 9-1-1. Another mom character, what a shocker.
AM: What are your secrets to maintaining a successful and viable career in the age of ageism? I believe, according to my research, you’re a young 76.
Ms. Wallace: I am and proud of it baby cakes. I have no beliefs in ageism. That’s something I teach in my healing work. The Good Book says as you believe it’s delivered to you. Brain science says whatever you focus on you focus on your beliefs and create more of. I just stay within myself knowing that I’ve got it. I’m a wonderful actress, and there are always parts out there for me, and directors and producers, and casting directors who think of me and want to hire me.
AM: I bet you also eat healthy, exercise, and maybe take supplements.
Ms. Wallace: And go to church too.
AM: There’s some secrets there as well.
Ms. Wallace: Well sure, and it all goes together. If my belief system supports me being successful throughout the rest of my life then that prompts me to eat well. I work out with a trainer twice a week. I power walk my doggie daily, and I travel a lot. I get a lot of exercise, and that makes me love life. People say, what are you going to do when you retire, I said, what does that word even mean when you’re doing stuff that you love? You don’t want to retire.
I’ve never heard of an actor saying they can’t wait till they retire. Rather, they say, “Please keep hiring me.” I think a lot of it has to do with the love of life and living it.
AM: Going back a few years, maybe more than a few years, you briefly taught high school in Kansas City., Kansas. Why did you decide to take time away from teaching to create a new path, and I believe that that led to an audition with director Hal Prince in his play A Little Night Music.
Ms. Wallace: That’s quite a story. I majored in theater. I had acted all of my childhood. My mother got me into modeling at an early age, mostly quite frankly, to help make money because we were very poor. So, it was just in my blood. I was born to be an actor.
I got a teaching degree so my mother would know I had something to fall back on. I owed her that because she had had a difficult life. I wanted her to have some security. Yet, once I had taught a year of high school, I thought, it’s my time now. I’m going to New York to be an actor, and everybody laughed at me. They all said, “You don’t know anybody. Nobody knows you. You’re crazy.” I said thanks for sharing. I’m going anyway, and in less than seven years I starred in E.T.
I had written Hal Prince a letter from an article that I had read in The New York Times about how he was getting ready to do a new musical, and he was looking for an unknown to star in it. I wrote him a cheesy letter, and I mean it was cheesy, and sent him even a cheesier photo. Three weeks later his secretary called and said, “Mr. Prince got your letter and would like to fly you to New York to audition.”
Well, of course being raised in Kansas in the Methodist Church, honesty was a big part of who I was. I asked what day he needs me. She told me the date, and I said, I already have a ticket to fly in on that day. So, as a result, I paid my own way to New York.
The audition, which I learned, wasn’t until five p.m. Hopping into a New York City taxi with all my belongings, I went to audition. I got down to the last five girls who were auditioning, and his assistant said, “Mr. Prince would like to hear you sing.” I looked at her and said I didn’t know we had to sing. She looked at me with this blank stare and said, “Well dear, it is a musical.” So, my first day in New York I sang happy birthday for Hal Prince and as a result didn’t get the part. But by the time I left there I knew the best singing teacher, and best place to study acting. I also made some friends, and I thought getting down to the last five girls on day one in NYC was pretty darn good.
AM: I’d say so. So how would you say your acting experience taught you the principles of creation.
Ms. Wallace: Because I believed in myself, and I knew what I wanted, and
I got it. I was living it, but I was living it unconsciously. I wasn’t living it as this is formula to creating in life, which is what I write about in my most recent book, BORN: Giving Birth to a New You. There is most definitely a formula that you can follow for creating your life. When I do that I just keep creating. I had several health specialists tell me I would never have a baby. I said, thanks for sharing. I’m going do it anyway. It took me six years, but my daughter is now 36 and my grandson is 19 months. What I want people to know is that people who love you, or even just know you, will oftentimes try and limit you because of their own fear. That fear steps forward so that they can help keep you safe. But we don’t want to just be safe in our world. That’s part of what we want to create. We want to safely create all the opportunities, all our dreams, and wishes of our heart.
AM: About how old were you when they told you couldn’t give birth.
Ms. Wallace: I was in my 30s and never had wanted a baby. Then one morning I woke up, and I hear this story a lot, and said, Oh, my God, I want a baby. From the movies you think boom, you’re going get pregnant and conceive. It took me six years because I had a large fibroid tumor that nobody found until I did a movie in Australia. The girl that took care of me, my handler, said “Dee, do you know this is? We’re known for this in Australia. We specialize in fertility.” So, she took me to see a doctor who found the tumor.
When I got back to the States, I learned they had just created the laparoscopy where they can go in through your belly button. I went in and had the tumor taken out that way. And then I got pregnant. So, that’s a good example of how God works in mysterious ways.
AM: Absolutely. That leads me to my next question. How does spirituality, religion and brain science work with each other around creating life?
Ms. Wallace: They’re all saying the same thing as we talked about earlier.
As you believe it is delivered to you. There’s not a destiny or a fate. It’s you creating your life based on your belief systems and your belief systems create your perspectives. If my belief system supports me, knowing that I can absolutely create anything from love in my life, then the universe hears that signal that I send out and matches it. The universe doesn’t judge. Its job is just to match what your direction is. If you get up every day and go, oh, my God, I’m so tired, the universe of your body will give you more tiredness. People say to me all the time in my private sessions.
“But what if I am tired,” they ask. I say you are tired because you keep telling yourself you are. That’s a direction to your energy. We learned this in fifth grade science. Energy is neutral. There’s no good or bad energy. You can direct it toward good or bad, but energy itself is neutral. Whatever signal and belief system you’re putting out there the universe will match without judgment.
AM: Do you have an example of anyone you worked with that resulted in a manifestation in their own life?
Ms. Wallace: Oh, my God! Almost every day. It’s a process of learning the formula and living it every day. So many people study it. They go to workshops and seminars, and read books, but they don’t practice it. I can read all the terms in ballet and never be able to perform five pirouette moves because I don’t put it into action. You have to live it. I never start my day without directing my day and what I want. I have to tell you that things just come to me and that’s the way it should be. However, through religion, society, and our upbringing, we’re taught that you have to struggle. If you don’t struggle then you don’t deserve to get what you want. Well, struggle pushes things away from you. Creation itself is very easy, and when I go out and speak, I jokingly say, you know God created the world in seven days. How hard could it be? Right?
AM: Right.
Ms. Wallace: Yet again, you have to know what you want. You match it up with love, according to my channel. Whatever you want, love it more. For example, I work a lot with people on money. So many people want money, but they don’t like money because they don’t have it. You can’t create something you want by not liking it because all the universe gets then is I want money, but I hate money, so don’t bring me money because I hate it, which is pretty simple to understand. I teach everyone to find their love place. Their love place is anything that, as soon as you think about it, your heart opens, and you have a smile on your face. So, if you go to your love place, like I use my doggy or my grandson, I feel that love. I go, yes, that’s what money feels like. When I have money I get to do lots of great things for people I love, for my community, and for the charities that I want to support.
People have to understand we’ve been taught all this BS about money’s the root of all evil, which is another way to hold you down and keep you safe. Money has no consciousness. It cannot decide what you’re going do with it. Your consciousness defines the money that you make and what you are. I know I’m always going to use money from love with love to enhance the lives of the people I love in my community. So, money just shows up. It just shows up everywhere.
AM: To be clear, what you’re saying is that love is so important to get what we want. What does it mean to have a love affair with the universe?
Ms. Wallace: You can’t have a love affair with the universe until you have a love affair with yourself. Most of us are taught that it’s blasphemous. God is not going to love us, blah, blah, blah, if we love ourselves. Yet in the Good Book it says, these miracles and more, what will he do also? How are you going to do a miracle if you’re putting yourself down all the time? That’s just an age old way that man has used to control other men and other people. What is it you want to direct? I’m directing that I love myself so much that I will give me everything I want knowing that I take care of myself first which allows me then to care and serve all the people I love.
AM: So many of us are not asking for and choosing for what we want. I think this happens a lot with everybody but a lot with married couples especially if I may say so, sexually speaking. Why are we afraid to ask for what we want?
Ms. Wallace: Because from the time you were born you were told to sit down and be quiet because Aunt Bee is speaking. You can’t have everything you want. Just pick one thing for Christmas that you want. We’re just taught to make ourselves smaller instead of look at what an amazing creator we are. I don’t know anybody who was taught, as a little child, you’re powerful and get to choose and create your own life. You’re amazing, smart, and capable and can have everything you want. I don’t know very many people who were raised that way. Did you?
AM: I think there’s truth to that.
Ms. Wallace: Well, that creates our belief system. Do you know this is brain science. A child’s brain is pretty much locked in by the time they’re eight years old. So, whatever you’re verbally taught, or whatever is modeled in front of you, your brain goes, that’s the way the world works. For example, after I did E.T, and it came out, and it was the biggest blockbuster of all time, everybody knew my name. I started pulling back into myself and getting smaller and I thought, what the heck is going on. I’m getting everything I want. Then I heard my grandma, who helped raise me, say they’re the rich people. We’re the good people. Now that’s an old religious training, isn’t it? I thought, my God, I’m one of them. I don’t want to be one of them. I don’t want that belief. That belief isn’t my belief. It’s grandma’s. But I can tell you most of our beliefs are not our own. We were taught to believe something instead of what of we want to choose to believe. Do I want to believe at age 76 there’s a lot of roles for me? Yes I do. Or do I want to feel maybe I should retire? Heck no I don’t. So, my life keeps showing up in the way that I direct it.
AM: Here’s a two part question I was going to ask this earlier, but I think it’s more pertinent at this time. There’s a rise in suicides, and you’ve lived through many with your colleagues, as well as your father, when you were still in high school. How can one recover from such a tragedy and move on in their life? How did you recover?
Ms. Wallace: My dad visited me in my room as a light after he died and his message was, I’m okay, it wasn’t your fault. Your job is to live your life as fully as you can and be as happy as you can living it. And then the light left, and I know, from talking to many people on the other side, all they want after they cross over is to have you honor and respect their choice in doing it, no matter how they go. They want for you to move on and be happy. Don’t use their stories to make you less than who you are.
AM: Thank you for sharing that advice. We have to talk about your weekly call in radio show you conduct from your home in beautiful Woodland Hills, California. It’s called the Conscious Creation Radio Show and airs every Sunday from 9 to 10 a.m. PT.
Ms. Wallace: That’s right. People can call in and ask anything they want of the channel, and the channel will give them some powerful direction.
AM: Your website, iamdeewallace.com, is the place to get information about how to listen to your show?
Ms. Wallace: Yes. The website will tell you how to get access the show. I’d love to hear from people who have read this interview.
AM: There’s also a recent book that I know you want to talk about.
Ms. Wallace: My most recent one is BORN: Giving Birth to a New You. I referred to it earlier. It is the complete formula for the creation process, written very simply on purpose.
I’m in the process of writing a new book called Horror Stories, and it’s very different from all my spiritual books. This one will be about stories from acting in horror films. I’m having a good time reliving all of the trauma that happens while we’re making those films. You wouldn’t believe some of the things an actor goes through.
AM: It’s probably things you can’t make up.
Ms. Wallace: You can’t.
AM: I imagine it will be quite interesting. I look forward to reading it.