Titanic’s ‘Irish little boy’ unrecognisable 25yrs after film – and he’s STILL getting paid for blockbuster
A Titanic child star has revealed he still gets royalty cheques for his brief appearance in the blockbuster movie 25 years ago. Reece Thompson, now 30, is famed for being the ‘little Irish boy’ on board the doomed liner in the 1997 film. The then five-year-old was seen desperately waiting for the Third Class gates […]
A Titanic child star has revealed he still gets royalty cheques for his brief appearance in the blockbuster movie 25 years ago.
Reece Thompson, now 30, is famed for being the ‘little Irish boy’ on board the doomed liner in the 1997 film.
The then five-year-old was seen desperately waiting for the Third Class gates to be unlocked, which would have given him and his family a chance of escape.
But tragically, they never were and Reece’s character and his sister were later seen being tucked into bed by their heartbroken mother.
Fans of the movie were left in tears as it became clear the family would perish when the Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg.
Reece, who is actually American and started his career as a child model, has now stepped away from the spotlight.
After leaving school, he studied philosophy at both Southern Utah University and the University Of Utah.
In 2018, he spoke to Business Insider about his memories of appearing in Titanic. At the time, he was working as a digital marketing director for a ski resort in Utah.
According to his LinkedIn, Reece is now holds the role of Business and Development Strategy at Eden Technologies Inc, which is also in Utah.
Reece told the publication: “My mom was like: ‘Let’s just do it. It’ll be cool. Even if the movie sucks, we’ll see it.’ Obviously, it ended up exploding, so that wasn’t a bad decision on her part, that’s for sure.”
Despite his young age, Reece was expected to speak with an Irish accent in Titanic.
However, he admitted: “If you listen to it, it doesn’t sound very Irish. It just sounds soft-spoken. I remember trying to mimic what the speech coach was trying to do. That’s as close as I got.”
Titanic, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, ended up grossing $2.2BILLION (£1.6BILLION) in the box office.
In the years that followed, Reece received royalty cheques for his role in the film. To begin with they were in the thousands, but they began to shrink over the years.
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In 2018, however, he was still receiving them.
“It’s weird because it’s not present in my mind anymore,” Reece said at the time.
“It’s not like, ‘Oh, when am I going to get a new Titanic cheque?’ When it happens, it’s like, ‘Oh, cool, an extra $100’.”
