Thanks to his only role in Titanic, Reece Thompson, who played the little Irish boy in third grade, continues to receive royalties from the film.
Even though he’s only on screen for a few seconds in the entire Titanic series, he’s remembered by all viewers!
In the film’s credits, he is referred to as a “little Irish boy”. At the beginning we could see him boarding the gigantic passenger ship and then during the sinking trying to reach the upper deck with his mother. The latter then, during a really moving sequence, made the horrifying decision to put him to sleep before the waves overwhelmed them.
This anonymous but unforgettable character with one and only one line in the entire film was played by a young Reece Thompson, who was only five at the time. Though he’s 30 today and now works as a marketing director for a Utah ski resort (a far cry from the acting career he gave up when he was 15), in 2017 at the microphone for Cosmopolitan Magazine, he mentioned his memories of the Titanic, particularly the royalties that he continued to take:
“I still get them from time to time, but they’re not nearly as important as they were when the film came out,” he said, before specifying how much money the James Cameron film was telling him:
“Much. A large chunk of that money has been used over the years to fund college, cars, and other things I needed. I would say it was around $30,000.”
20th Century Fox
If Reece Thompson is still making money long after Titanic’s release, it’s for a very specific reason. As he also explained in the interview, an actor should receive royalties the moment he utters a word in a film. However, during the shipwreck of the liner, we could hear the little Irish boy uttering the following short reply: “What are we doing, mama?”
Enough to ensure its performer revenue for a very long time, especially considering the colossal triumph of the feature film, which was its biggest hit of all time when it was released in 1997.
20th Century Fox
Still at the Cosmopolitan microphone, Reece Johnson also recalled the famous scene in which his mother put him to bed before the disaster:
“At first they really wanted to slowly fill the room with water, but I couldn’t swim. I don’t know exactly what they were up to, but I remember they specifically asked me if I could swim. And I was like, ‘If I have bracelets, I can swim.’”
James Cameron begins his film by paying tribute to the dogs that perished in the Titanic sinking. Did you notice that?
(Re)discover all the little hidden details of the film…