Several of Steven Spielberg’s former stars supported the director at the premiere of his new film – including Goldie Hawn, more than 50 years after they worked together.
On Thursday (4 June), Hawn, 80, was in attendance at the London premiere of Disclosure Day, a new thriller starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth and Colman Domingo.
The film also features Wyatt Russell, the son of Hawn and Kurt Russell – and his proud mum watched on as Spielberg introduced him at the start of the film.
Spielberg, 79, informed the audience that Hawn was present, explaining that they are long-time friends since working together on crime drama The Sugarland Express in 1974.
The film, which follows a married couple who take a police officer hostage, was an important one in Spielberg’s career, marking his first theatrical film after making the TV movie Duel in 1971. Hiring Hawn was a coup for the director, having won an Oscar for Cactus Flower in 1969.
Other actors in attendance included Jeff Goldblum, who starred in Jurassic Park (1993) and its sequel The Lost World (1997), as well as The BFG star Mark Rylance, who Spielberg directed to an Oscar win in Bridge of Spies (2015).
Benedict Cumberbatch – who starred in Spielberg’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse (2011) – Ready Player One actor Tye Sheridan and JJ Abrams also watched the film. Spielberg produced Abrams’s 2011 sci-fi drama Super 8.
Disclosure Day tells the story of a television meteorologist (Blunt) who attempts to reveal the truth behind an alien conspiracy being hidden by the government.
An official logline for the film teases: “If you found out you weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to seven billion people. We are coming close to... Disclosure Day.”
It’s the director’s latest film to explore the alien genre after Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1982’s ET the Extra-Terrestrial, 2005’s War of the Worlds and 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
At the film’s UK premiere, Spielberg expressed the belief that extra-terrestrial life will be discovered in our lifetime.
"My view has become more realistic," he told the BBC. "There's a lot of mystery and things that are undisclosed, but I've become more optimistic that people are going to be able to discover things that we have not been allowed to discover."
Disclosure Day is released on 12 June.
