Mason Thames

Hundreds of kids auditioned over Zoom for the lead in Scott Derrickson's The Black Phone. The part went to a 13-year-old from Texas who'd spent four years as a kid touring with a professional ballet company. The film grossed $161 million on a $16-18 million budget, and Derrickson praised his ability to process every moment without overacting.

The real inflection point came on a transatlantic flight. Dean DeBlois, heading to London for live-action How to Train Your Dragon auditions, watched The Black Phone somewhere over the Atlantic and added Thames to the candidate list. He got the part. The movie opened to $83 million and cleared $636 million worldwide.

Three films hit No. 1 at the box office in 2025: How to Train Your Dragon, Black Phone 2, and Regretting You. Combined worldwide gross: over $850 million. He's the first actor to pull that off since Jim Carrey in 1994, and he did it at 18.

Most teen actors would ride a $636 million family franchise straight into more family franchises. Instead, he showed up at the 2026 Sundance premiere of Idiots playing a rich psychopath being hauled to rehab. The Wrap headlined its review "Mason Thames Is Evil." Dave Franco, who's now worked with him twice, compared the performance to Hannibal Lecter. Going dark right after a dragon movie is a deliberate bet that range matters more than brand safety.

Before he ever read a script, he spent four years touring with a professional ballet company as the youngest cast member, performing Fritz in The Nutcracker starting at age six. He credits the training with teaching him to take direction and understand physicality, which explains why his stunt work in Black Phone and the physical comedy in Dragon look effortless.

He got called out on the Black Phone 2 set for accidentally slipping into his Hiccup voice, because he had wrapped Dragon just months earlier. That kind of muscle-memory crossover only happens when you're working nonstop, which he has been since roughly 2021.