Steven Spielberg Helped Discover New Han Solo Actor

Steven Spielberg hit the red carpet Thursday night for AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony for John Williams. The frequent collaborators have a deep and long-held respect, as Williams' music has helped paint the picture of many of Spielberg's films. When he spoke with ET (Heh, easy for him to agree to that particular interview, huh?), Spielberg confirmed as earlier reported that Williams will team with him once again for Indiana Jones 5, but he also spoke about Harrison Ford's other most famous character, Han Solo, and how he helped find the new young version of him, Alden Ehrenreich, who will play the character in the as-yet untitled Han Solo: A Star Wars Story.

"He was in a Bat Mitzvah video that my daughter acted with him in, for their best friend Layla," Spielberg said of Ehrenreich's surprising find. "They showed me their video, and I loved it, and I got him an agent. That's how it sort of all began!" The famed and award-winning director, who obviously has close ties to both Lucasfilm as a whole and to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy specifically (she produced several of his films directly and was once part of his own Amblin Entertainment), said he actually first thought Ehrenreich "had a lot of promise in comedy!" And didn't know "he was going to go rogue drama. Most of his choices have been in drama and people don't know how funny he is."

Spielberg also said that despite Williams' many contributions to his own films, scoring films like the Indiana Jones series, ET, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and many more, the theme to Star Wars would be his pick out of all of Williams' works to be his personal soundtrack to life.