'E.T.' screenwriter Melissa Mathison dies at 65

Part II and Apocalypse Now, before she broke out with her script for The Black Stallion, which was released as a feature length film in 1979.

[...] history will most fondly remember her for fleshing out the story of that friendly, homesick alien E.T. The film, directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1982, would become one of the highest grossing of all time.

In a 1995 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mathison, who was one of five children born to a journalist father and a mother who sometimes worked in publicity, remembered the Hollywood Hills household in which she grew up as a place where independence and creativity were encouraged.