Valerie Bertinelli claimed she and Steven Spielberg are old flames.
“I dated Steven for a New York minute,” the 64-year-old actor said during her April 14 appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show. “It was obviously before I met [ex-husband Eddie Van Halen], I went up to go read for Raiders of the Lost Ark, and then he asked me out on a date.”
Bertinelli then paused her discussion with the host to give her old flame a message.
“We were together for, I don’t know, three [or] four months and he still has a bowling shirt of mine, Steven, that you had in your house, and I didn’t get it out of the closet when we broke up, so I would like it back,” she joked.
A shocked Barrymore asked: “How have we never talked about that? Did you guys have fun?”
According to the best-selling author, she and the 78-year-old filmmaker “had a ball.”
“He invited me to the Academy Awards that year, and I went, and this was the year I believe that Sally Field won, and she was in the elevator with her Oscar and I’m a huge Sally Field fan,” Bertinelli continued. “I loved her forever and I couldn’t say anything. I was just like, ‘Congratulations.’”
Bertinelli didn’t reveal any further details about their alleged fling.
The Independent has contacted Spielberg’s representatives for a comment.
Bertinelli went on to meet her first husband, the late Eddie Van Halen, backstage at his concert in Louisiana in 1980. The two then tied the knot a year later. Bertinelli was 21 years old at the time and Van Halen was 26.
The couple welcomed their son Wolfgang Van Halen, 34, and spent 20 years together before ultimately separating in 2001. However, their divorce wasn’t finalized until 2007.
Van Halen tragically died of throat cancer in 2020.
Bertinelli didn’t get married to her second husband, Tom Vitale, until 2011. She and Vitale were first introduced in 2004 through Bertinelli’s brother, Patrick.
After 10 years, Bertinelli filed for legal separation from Vitale and officially filed for divorce in 2022.
Like Bertinelli, Spielberg has also tied the knot twice. The Jurassic Park creator said “I do” to his first wife, Amy Irving, in 1985, four years before they decided to part ways in 1989.
He then began dating his second, and current wife, Kate Capshaw, that same year. The two dove head first into the romance, moving in together after only a few months and giving birth to their first child a year later.
Spielberg has seven children, one of which he welcomed with Irving (son Max Spielberg) and six he shares with Capshaw.
Jessica, 48, is the eldest of all the children and is Capshaw’s first daughter from her marriage to Robert Capshaw.
Theo Spielberg, 36, and Mikaela Spielberg, 29, were adopted by Spielberg and Capshaw in 1991 and 1996, respectively. The two also share 34-year-old daughter Sasha Spielberg, 33-year-old son Sawyer Spielberg, and 28-year-old daughter Destry Allyn Spielberg.