The Guffey family includes, from left, Cary, Michelle, Griffin and Patrick. (Michelle Guffey)

There was a time when Cary Guffey was the face of one of the biggest box-office hits of the year, starring in a movie that earned more than $300 million worldwide.

That was when he was 5.

Guffey starred as Barry Guilier, the child abducted by aliens in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

“We’re coming up on 40 years, which just blows my mind,” says Guffey, now 45 and a financial adviser in Birmingham.

Back in 1976, Guffey was in a preschool kindergarten class in Douglasville, Georgia, when Hollywood came calling.

“I had never seen a movie or had an acting lesson,” he says. “I had zero idea that Hollywood existed. The casting director’s niece was in my class. She came to pick up Jenny, saw me and said, ‘That’s him.’”

After a screen test, director Steven Spielberg agreed, and that’s when the Guffeys went to Hollywood. Or Mobile, actually, where filming took place for a few months during the summer of 1976. (Just this week, Variety confirmed that the film will be re-released for a week in September.)

Memories of the filming are sporadic four decades later, says Guffey, who turned 4 on the set of the movie.

“I remember fractions of it,” he says. “I remember being carried around the set and all the attention that was paid to me. I remember it was a very muddy set. As a kid, you couldn’t get down and get mud on your knees or your clothes, so they’d carry me from Point A to Point B.”

Guffey also remembers the “aliens,” who were visible at the end of the movie.

“It was a dance troupe of little girls,” he says. “Talk about suffering for your art. They put them in these polyurethane suits in the middle of summer in an airplane hangar in Mobile.”

The entire finale of the movie, as a matter of fact, was filmed in that hangar in Mobile.

“When the mother ship comes in, that’s all indoors in Mobile,” Guffey says. “The ending where the ramp comes down and there’s this bright light and I walk off the spaceship to be reunited with my mother, that was all done with lights and mirrors. It was a slick surface, and they put ballet slippers on me, which was mortifying for a 4-year-old.”

Guffey also recalls another memorable scene, when Barry and his mother, played by Melinda Dillon, first encounter the aliens. Their house shakes violently, lights go on and off and, eventually, the kitchen blows up.

“Steven called me on the set and wanted to show me the kitchen blow up, because he didn’t want me to be scared when everything happened,” Guffey says. “There was one red button that was the control panel for the kitchen blowing up.

“I knew, but Melinda didn’t, so when it happened, she was freaking out, and I’m like, nah, the red button is around the corner,” he recalls.

Cary Guffey’s onscreen mother in “Close Encounters” was Melinda Dillon.

The scene where Barry is pulled by the “aliens” through the doggie door was also less than traumatic for the 4-year-old. “It was actually my real mom on the other side pulling me through,” Guffey says. “It was a tug-of-war between my real mom and my fake mom.”

“Close Encounters” was one of the first three or four movies that Spielberg directed, and Guffey has fond memories of him.

“He wanted me to have every experience I could,” he says. “We had helicopters on the set, and he offered to let me go up in one, but I passed. He wasn’t my boss. He was my buddy Steven, and we were just hanging out.”

No one knew how big “Close Encounters” was going to be.

“We had the premiere in New York, and I presented an award at the American Music Awards,” Guffey says. “I met the queen in England. I’m getting older as these things are happening, so I remember them.”

After “Close Encounters,” Guffey did about one movie a year until he was 12. He played Bear Bryant’s grandson in “The Bear,” which starred Gary Busey, and also appeared in movies such as “Cross Creek” and “Stroker Ace.”

“The first rule was that I couldn’t be in anything that I couldn’t see,” Guffey says. “The second was this is not a job, it’s a hobby. The second it becomes work, we’re done with it.”

And at age 12, he quit.

“I’m very fortunate that my parents approached it as a hobby rather than a career,” Guffey says. “It can eat people up. You’re real popular, and then you’re not. There are too many cautionary tales. There aren’t enough Ron Howards. Most child actors have a very hard path, but I was in this spectacular film and can go shop at Walmart right now and nobody knows who I am.”

Guffey played in the band at the University of Florida and got his MBA from Jacksonville State University. He left his acting career far behind him, but he doesn’t shy away from discussing it.

These days, Cary Guffey is a financial adviser and avid marathon runner in Birmingham. (Michelle Guffey)

“It tends to come up,” he says. “People that know me and know my story, to them it’s fun for them to tell the story. To me, it was such a positive experience. It’s fun for me to tell the story, because I am so fortunate to have gotten close to the flame, and I didn’t get burned.”

Guffey has stayed in touch with his “Close Encounters” cast and director “through the years,” though the last time most of them saw each other was for the film’s 25^th anniversary.

Guffey and his wife, Michelle, have two sons, 15-year-old Patrick and 13-year-old Griffin. “I have a life in Birmingham, Alabama, that’s chasing after my kids and taking care of my clients,” says Guffey, an avid marathon runner.

The family watched “Close Encounters” together several years ago, Guffey says. “It has been so long that the 13-year-old can’t even remember he’s seen the movie,” he says. “Every once in a while they’ll bring it up to their friends.”

And every once in a while, Guffey gets a residual check for one of the most popular extraterrestrial dramas ever filmed.

“I was on the tail-end of when actors weren’t compensated for future revenue,” Guffey says. “For a couple of months’ work in 1976, I made $4,000, and I get a little every time it comes out on Blu-ray or DVD or airs on TV, so I’ve made more money over the years than I did on set.”

Those checks vary widely.

“If it airs on TBS in the middle of the night, the stamp probably costs more than the check,” Guffey says. “If it’s a major network, we could go out and get a steak.”