Steven Spielberg frames Disclosure Day as the culmination of a lifelong belief system inherited from his engineer father Arnold. He's positioning himself not as a conspiracy theorist but as a thoughtful artist who's done his homework—citing congressional testimonies and documentaries as evidence. The film is about open-mindedness, he's saying, not fear.
Insiders note that Spielberg has never actually had his own close encounter—and he knows it. 'I deserve a sighting,' he quipped to CBS News. But more telling is Josh O'Connor's comment about how UFO witnesses have been 'patronized and gaslit'—a swipe at officialdom that suggests these celebrities believe there's a cover-up, not just uncertainty.
Spielberg told CBS News: 'Based on everybody I've listened to and every documentary I've ever watched and all the testimonies in Congress that I've heard, I absolutely think that they have been here, and they are here.' Obama clarified his February podcast comments on Instagram: 'Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there... But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.'
Whether you call it genuine belief or perfectly timed publicity for Disclosure Day, Spielberg has given permission to a whole generation of A-listers to go public with their ET convictions. And when Tom Cruise, Emma Stone, and a former president are all nodding along? That's not fringe anymore—that's mainstream.
Steven Spielberg just dropped his fifth film about extraterrestrials—Disclosure Day hits June 12—and the man behind E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind is done playing coy. The legendary director sat down with CBS News and laid out exactly where he stands: "Based on everybody I've listened to and every documentary I've ever watched and all the testimonies in Congress that I've heard, I absolutely think that they have been here, and they are here.
And who knows, maybe they've always been here." That's not hedging. That's a declaration. The 79-year-old even admitted he feels cheated: "I deserve a sighting," he joked to CBS.
"I mean, I'm an ambassador to these guys." But Spielberg's cosmic confidence traces back much further than recent congressional hearings. His father Arnold—a pioneering electrical engineer who worked on RCA's first computer—regularly discussed science fiction with young Steven and planted an idea that's never left him. "He wasn't talking about Earth, he was talking about the cosmos," Spielberg explained to E!
News. "It really became consistently truthful. As I got older and older, I started believing that something really is going on that we're not being told." Notice what he's implying there: even his own government isn't being fully transparent with its citizens.
The timing of Disclosure Day's release has proven convenient for generating headlines, but Spielberg isn't the only A-lister willing to go on record about extraterrestrials. Emily Blunt, who stars opposite Josh O'Connor in the new film, told TIME that "it would be an arrogant thing to presume we are alone in the universe, or that we are the most powerful, technologically advanced civilization." That's a direct quote from her—no dancing around it.
Meanwhile, Emma Stone just promoted Bugonia at the 2025 Venice Film Festival and used the opportunity to quote Carl Sagan, arguing that assuming "we're alone in this vast expansive universe" is "pretty narcissistic." The two-time Oscar winner didn't stop there: "So, yes, I'm coming out and saying it: I believe in aliens." Perhaps most explosive was Barack Obama's February 2026 appearance on the No Lie With Brian Tyler Cohen podcast.
When asked if aliens are real, the former president simply answered: "They're real." The political universe momentarily short-circuited—until Obama walked it back with an Instagram clarification admitting he'd meant statistically there's likely life elsewhere in the cosmos, but he "saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!" Even his qualifier felt like a knowing wink at classified programs. Not everyone needs political cover to share their close encounters.
Miley Cyrus told designer Rick Owens in 2020 that she was "chased down by some sort of UFO" while driving through San Bernardino, California—and insists other drivers stopped to witness it too. She claims she made eye contact with a being inside the craft: "It looked at me and we made eye contact, and I think that's what really shook me." Demi Lovato, meanwhile, says they saw "huge lights that made a question mark" directly above them during a 2020 stargazing session on their 28th birthday while attempting to make contact.
And Tom Cruise—fresh from starring in War of the Worlds—has maintained for two decades that believing we're alone is pure arrogance. As he told Bild back in 2005: "Millions of stars and we're supposed to be the only living creatures? No, there are many things out there, we just don't know." He repeated similar sentiments to UK's 5 News in 2013, calling it "arrogant" to think humans are alone across "all of the solar systems of forever." Disclosure Day co-star Josh O'Connor offered perhaps the most cutting observation about why these conversations matter: "When you hear accounts of people who have had these experiences, they weren't traumatic.
The traumas come from the way people responded, how they've been patronized and gaslit and shunned. I completely believe that they had those encounters." That's a direct indictment of how witnesses to unexplained phenomena have been treated—and it's notable coming from someone in Spielberg's orbit. Whether you're convinced these celebrities have seen something or just see Disclosure Day as elaborate marketing, one thing is clear: the stigma around discussing UFOs and extraterrestrials has officially evaporated among Hollywood's elite.
