‘Extremely Loud’ star, 14, shines amid Hollywood’s elite
Comments (...)OAKLAND, Calif. — Thomas Horn looked alarmed. The 14-year-old star of the new film “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” had just finished a news interview at an Oakland coffeehouse when his mother suggested he run down the street and pick up the dry cleaning while they were in the neighborhood.
“Oh! Do you think they’ll recognize me?” he asked his mom. No, he wasn’t worried that he might be easily identified for his impending Hollywood fame, but whether the cleaners would give him the Horn family’s clothes without a claim ticket. She assured him it would be fine, and he sped off.
Dry cleaning or not, there is little doubt Thomas will become familiar to millions very soon. They’ll come to know him on screen — the film opens nationwide Friday — as the brainy though often abrasive Oskar Schell, a troubled boy haunted by the loss of his father in the 9/11 attacks. And they’ll learn about Thomas off-screen as a novice actor who beat out more than 3,000 boys for the role, who doesn’t just hold his own alongside Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock but truly carries the film. He’s in every scene, delivering a tremendous amount of complex, rapid-fire dialogue, moving narration and simmering emotions.
All this from a young man whose only previous acting experience was as a grasshopper in a fifth-grade play.
“I may leave that off my resume,” Thomas kidded with a slight grimace amid the afternoon bustle in Caffe Trieste on Piedmont Avenue, squeezing in an interview between school and martial arts class (he’s a brown belt).
Thomas was discovered two years ago thanks to his successful stint on “Jeopardy!” Kids’ Week when he won $31,800 and a family trip to Alaska. His obvious intelligence and poise caught the eye of Scott Rudin, producer of “Extremely Loud,” who felt Thomas might be perfect for director Stephen Daldry’s adaptation of the best-selling novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Shortly after his TV appearance, Thomas was asked to audition via video; then he flew to New York for a tryout. And though the ninth-grader admits he’d never been terribly interested in pop culture, he and his parents decided this was a rare opportunity.
“I thought, ‘What do I have to lose?’” he said. “Not everyone gets a chance like this. Surely this must be happening for a reason.”
Since the movie opened in limited release in December, Thomas has been interviewed by major newspapers, appeared on national morning shows and attended New York and Hollywood premieres of the film. And Thomas won the best young actor award at the 17th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards in Los Angeles on Thursday.
Daldry simply adores his young star, he said in a recent phone interview, and was constantly astounded at the depth of emotion Thomas produced despite the fact he’d never experienced such pain in his own life. Thomas was only 3 years old when the twin towers collapsed, so Daldry took him to the 9/11 Memorial construction site, and together they met with several people who had lost loved ones in the tragedy.
“Thomas is highly articulate, highly intelligent, charming and simply a great soul,” Daldry said. “He has an amazing ability to access emotions, to reach in and go to places that are dangerous and harrowing and startling. He has a tremendous work ethic, always did his homework, was always well-prepared. We never approached him as a child actor. He was always the lead actor.” And he got along famously with his co-stars, Daldry said, often comparing notes with Hanks.
Thomas admits that tapping into unexplored emotions was an interesting process. “My character has gone through all sorts of trauma, even before he loses his father,” Thomas said. “He shows symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome. He’s afraid of so many things — and he’s gone through this horrible loss.
“So when I had to do an emotional scene, the director had built a little room for me. We called it ‘The Shack,’” Thomas said. “I’d go there for 20 or 30 minutes and sit by myself and think about what Oskar was going through, what he would be feeling in that circumstance. And when I felt that I was gone and he was filling me up, I was ready to do the scene.”
Oskar may or may not get him a small statuette of a similar name, but certainly may lead to more roles for Thomas, who says he might continue with acting if opportunities arise.
In the meantime, even movie stars have to pick up the dry cleaning.
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