Henry Thomas has found newfound fame in The Haunting of Hill House, though for most people he is best known as the actor who played Elliott in ET: The Extra Terrestrial.
However, he has admitted that his parents originally thought his breakout role as a child star was a “fluke” as he struggled to break back into acting.
“It seemed like a one off thing that I got a part in the movie and I think my parents thought that,” he recalled to MailOnline. “To them it was just a fluke. They didn’t want to move. They didn’t want to change anything.”
“My mum didn’t enjoy leaving the house or even wearing shoes, she really hated it. So I felt a bit of pressure to not fully invest myself in that world and to stay grounded in home life.
“Then my mum became critical, so when I was getting supporting roles she would say, ‘I don’t know why you’re not on the poster. Talk to your people.’
“It was conflicting. But by the time I was 17 I had frozen them out and I said, ‘I’m going to do it and I don’t need your help and you’re just holding me back.’
“I think that was more traumatic for my mum than for me. I was an only child so there was a sense she was losing me.”
Thomas ended-up moving to New York to find work as an actor, and in more recent years has appeared in a number of horrors, notably The Haunting of Hill House.
“The psychological terror is borne out of the events of one night 20 years ago that my character, the father Hugh [Crain], has never fully revealed to the children,” he explained of the Netflix series.
“Throughout the series you’re watching each character recount certain events from different perspectives and come to terms with a particularly traumatic event in their childhood.”
The Haunting of Hill House is available now on Netflix.
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