World-renowned for his iconic role as Elliott in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Henry Thomas is an award-winning and prolific actor from the United States. For his role in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982, he won a Young Artist Award and received nominations for the Saturn Award, Golden Globe Award, and BAFTA Award. Thomas went on to appear in movies such as Cloak & Dagger (1984), Fire in the Sky (1993), Legends of the Fall (1994), Suicide Kings (1997), All the Pretty Horses (2000), Gangs of New York (2002), 11:14 (2003), and Dear John (2010). His performance in the television movie Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1997) earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries, or Television Film.

Thomas has worked with director Mike Flanagan on multiple occasions, appearing in the movies Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), Gerald’s Game (2017), and Doctor Sleep (2019), as well as the television shows The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and its follow-up series The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), the former winning him a Saturn Award. He played a significant part in Flanagan’s horror series Midnight Mass (2021).

Thomas is also an accomplished musician. The Blue Heelers, a San Antonio band named after a type of dog, included Thomas on guitar and as a songwriter in the 1990s. The band self-produced an album, Twister, despite not having a record deal. The music for Mika Kaurismäki’s film Honey Baby, which featured four original songs written and sung by Thomas as the fictitious musician Tom Brackett, was created by him and Nikki Sudden in 2003. In a commercial for Xfinity and Sky UK in November 2019, Thomas reprised his role as Elliott. In the advert, E.T. makes a holiday visit to an adult Elliott and his family.