EVERY THURSDAY EVENING on RTÉ1, viewers have been enjoying The Mentalist, starring Simon Baker as unorthodox police consultant Patrick Jane and Robin Tunney as his long- suffering captain Teresa Lisbon.
Each week, Jane helps Lisbon’s team solve murders using his intuition and gut instinct. Recently, a new character has been introduced into the popular series: Lisbon’s bounty hunter brother Thomas. But wait, that boyish face looks familiar, and that name . . .
Thirty years ago, Henry Thomas (far right) pedalled his way into global fame in the Steven Spielberg movie ET – The Extraterrestrial. As Elliot, the lonely boy who discovers an alien in his back yard, Thomas (and his animatronic pal) captured the hearts of millions of moviegoers. The scene in which Elliot and ET take to the air on a bicycle (below), then is silhouetted by the moon, is a classic moment in movie history.
An only child from San Antonio, Texas, Thomas dreamed of being a movie star, but when he was auditioned by Spielberg for the part of Elliot, he was up against hundreds of other child actor hopefuls. So he thought about his dead dog and tears came to his eyes – just
what Spielberg needed for his family-friendly sci-fi blockbuster.
ET became the biggest-grossing movie of all time, and ET’s “phone home” catchphrase entered the lexicon. After the alien’s spaceship took off, though, and the closing credits rolled – along with a gazillion moviegoers’ tears – Thomas’s career came back to earth with a bang.
He went back to school in San Antonio and acted in a series of no-mark movies, the most notable of which was Psycho IV: The Beginning, in which he played a young Norman Bates.
It wasn’t as good as ET.
Every now and then, though, a decent film would come along; he was in Legends of the Fall in 1994, and in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York in 2002.
During the 1990s, Thomas turned to music, playing in a Texas band called The Blue Heelers. He also worked with the late English songwriter Nikki Sudden on the soundtrack for a movie by Mika Kaurismaki. He now fronts his own band, Farspeaker, which boasts influences from Tom Waits to Willie Nelson to David Bowie to John Lee Hooker. You can check out his lonesome space cowboy blues sounds on myspace.com/henrythomasmusic. Twice divorced with one child, Hazel, Thomas lives and works in LA.
Last year, Thomas combined his love of music with his passion for acting, starring as the legendary Hank Williams in The Last Ride, a “biopic” following the mysterious final days in the life of the country ’n’ western star.
Kevin Courtney
