Steven Spielberg Gets Restraining Order Against Alleged Stalker Threatening to Kill Him

Steven Spielberg has been granted a temporary restraining order in court against a woman he claims is threatening to kill him. The famous director of iconic films like E.T. and Jaws filed legal documents seeking protection from a woman named Sarah Char, according to TMZ, alleging she has been harassing him for months and sending death threats.

In court documents obtained by the outlet, Spielberg said law enforcement informed him the woman tried to purchase a gun to kill him, and that she had been arrested for criminal threats, harassment and stalking. The director added that he got a Twitter message from Char reading, "If I have to personally MURDER people for stealing my IPs‚ I WILL. Get me?" Spielberg wrote in court documents he was scared Char would follow through with her threats toward either him or his family, and was awarded a temporary restraining order requiring her to stay at least 100 yards away from him, his wife and his daughter.

It's been a tough year for the Spielberg family, who lost patriarch Arnold Spielberg in August after he died at the age of 103 due to natural causes. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, his children said their father "taught them to 'love to research,' to 'expand their mind,' to 'keep their feet on the ground but reach for the stars' and perhaps most fatefully to 'look up.'"

Arnold was an instrumental part of Steven's career, helping him to create the indie movie Firelight — a 135-minute movie Steve wrote, directed, shot, edited and composed at just 17 years old. The movie would play at only one movie theater in Pheonix in 1964. "The story was a forerunner to Steven's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with aliens landing on Earth, and I built the special effects," Arnold told the Jewish Journal in 2012. "But while Steven would ask for my advice, the ideas were always his own."

Arnold also served in the U.S. Army, enlisting a month after the Pearl Harbor attack and serving with the 490th "Skull & Wings" Bomb Squadron, where he became communications chief. He was awarded a Bronze Star, and his time in the army went on to partially inspire Steven's film Saving Private Ryan in 1998. The family is planning a celebration of life when it is safe to gather, tentatively in fall 2021.