By Brendan McFadden Chloe Dobinson
A child actor who had a single line in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic continues to receive royalties from his brief appearance. Reece Thompson, who portrayed a third-class Irish youngster in the film featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet , delivered the memorable line to his mother as their cabin floods: “Where are we going, Mommy?” This was during a tense moment when access to the lifeboats was restricted, with priority given to first-class passengers. His on-screen mother attempts to reassure him by saying: “We’re just waiting, dear. When they finish putting first-class people in the boats, they’ll be starting with us, and we’ll want to be ready, right?” Now a digital marketing director, Reece revealed to an Australian TV channel that the poignant scene still resonates with many. Having been just 5-years-old at the time of filming, Reece continues to earn a steady income from the movie’s reruns, with an average payout of $100 (€84). Occasionally, he pockets up to $250 (€210), depending on the frequency of television broadcasts or sales from new DVD/streaming releases. Reece, now 30, revealed to Cosmopolitan in 2017 that he pocketed around $30,000 (€25,000) from the film and enjoyed a healthy stream of royalties when the movie first hit the screens. He admitted: ”I still get them every once in a while, but they’re not nearly as nice as they were back when it came out,” reports the Mirror US . He also shared that he’s spent much of his earnings over the years on necessities like university fees and cars. Interestingly, Reece was cast for the role due to his Irish appearance. He explained: ”My mum is the one that got me into acting, and we did a photoshoot – just cute-kid glamour stuff or whatever – and in one of my head-shots I was wearing 1930s-esque clothes, with short knickers and a little beret sort of thing, and that was how I got the initial audition. “And then when I came in, it seemed like they just picked me. They were looking for characters who looked Irish, and apparently that picture of me made me look particularly Irish.” He confessed that delivering his iconic line in an Irish accent proved challenging. Reece recalled: ”They wanted me to say it in an Irish accent, and as a 5-year-old, I had no idea what that meant. “So I had my handler or whatever – my mum was on set, but my mum’s not proficient in accents either – trying to explain to me how to say it, and I remember just trying to say it over and over and over again. That was the more frustrating part.” He added: “Everyone was like, ‘If you can, just get this accent.’ When I’ve gone back and seen it, it doesn’t really sound super Irish to me. But it’s such a small line and I had such a soft voice that it didn’t really [matter].” The Titanic tragically sank after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic on 15 April 1912, resulting in the loss of more than 1,500 passengers and crew members. The renowned 1997 film portrays the romantic tale between Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater, individuals from contrasting social classes, aboard the ill-fated RMS Titanic on its final journey. In the summer of 2023, underwater robots embarked on an exploration of the nearly 113-year-old shipwreck. The expedition revealed that the ship’s famous bow had deteriorated due to decay. Immortalised in the 1997 film when Jack held Rose at her waist, the bow has lost a significant portion to the seafloor, gradually disappearing year-by-year. Tomasina Ray, director of collections at RMS Titanic Inc, the firm responsible for the expedition, remarked: “The bow of Titanic is just iconic – you have all these moments in pop culture – and that’s what you think of when you think of the shipwreck. And it doesn’t look like that anymore.”