--- name: "Thomas Horn" canonical: "https://film.one/person/thomas-horn" roles: ["Actor"] born: "14 December 1997" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "actor" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-20T07:37:10.680177+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Thomas Horn Actor. Born 14 December 1997 in San Francisco, California, USA. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 14 December 1997, San Francisco, California, USA - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Horn_(actor), https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1355170, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4223385/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/929136 ## Streaming the US now - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close*](https://film.one/film/extremely-loud-and-incredibly-close.md) (41) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Thomas Horn > One performance, and a good one. As Oskar Schell in *Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close* (2011), Horn played a grieving boy who lists his fears rather than feel them, and did it with a stillness the film around him never trusted. He then, in effect, stopped. Oskar Schell walks New York with a tambourine at his hip and rattles it when the panic comes. He keeps a list of what frightens him: bridges, the subway, loud noises. Horn plays him small, brisk and literal, a boy who treats his father's death as a problem with a method, and the performance is at its best when it does the least. In the one scene the film leaves alone, Oskar sits with the answering machine and listens to his father's voice from the tower saying he is fine, and Horn's face does nothing at all. It moved us more than we expected, and it was the nothing that did it. He had never acted. Scott Rudin saw him win on Jeopardy in 2010, in the show's Kids Week, a nationwide search followed, and he was cast as the lead in *Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close* (2011) opposite Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. Told that way it sounds like a stunt, and the casting is of a piece with the film's idea of Oskar, a boy chosen for being clever. What Horn did with the part was not a stunt. He has said he would find somewhere quiet before a scene and wait, sometimes for half an hour, until "when I felt the character was in my body and I had left, I could walk onto set or into rehearsal." That is a more patient method than the film had. Because the film fought him. Eric Roth's screenplay gives Oskar a voiceover that explains each thing he does as he does it, so a character built on not saying things spends two hours saying them, and Alexandre Desplat's score presses wherever Horn is content to wait. His scenes with Hanks, in flashback, are the best in it: Hanks easy and warm, Horn watchful, neither of them pushed. Most critics were as unpersuaded by Stephen Daldry's film as we were, and some doubted the boy at the centre of it. We did not. Those who were moved were moved by Horn, and we see why. After that there is a television film, *Space Warriors* (2013), in which he played Jimmy Hawkins, and a short, *A Financial Engagement* (2016), on which he also worked as first assistant director. No acting credits are recorded after it. He said early on that he wanted a career with more than one discipline in it, and he appears to have meant it. The answering machine scene is still there, and it is a better thing to have left behind than most careers manage. ## Biography Thomas Horn is an American actor. He played Oskar Schell in the 2011 film *Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close* and Jimmy Hawkins in the 2013 television film *Space Warriors*. In 2010, Horn won on *Jeopardy!* during Kids Week, earning $31,800. Producer Scott Rudin saw the episode and offered him an audition for *Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close*. Horn won a Critics' Choice Award for Best Young Actor for the role. Horn was born on 14 December 1997 in San Francisco, California. His father is an ophthalmic surgeon and his mother, of Croatian descent, is a pediatric oncologist. He is fluent in Croatian. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close* (2011), Fi1m 41, as Oskar Schell — [page](https://film.one/film/extremely-loud-and-incredibly-close.md) ## Complete filmography (2) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Space Warriors* (2013), as Jimmy Hawkins - *Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close* (2011), as Oskar Schell — Fi1m 41, [page](https://film.one/film/extremely-loud-and-incredibly-close.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/thomas-horn