Adults can easily be terrified by a kid in a horror movie, but how does that process work for the actual child actor? Turns out, the best way to avoid scaring a kid in a horror film is to simply avoid telling them they're in one. This is the child actor who had no idea he was in a horror movie.
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00:00Horror movies cover a wide spectrum of the things that scare us, and creepy kids are
00:04responsible for some of the most haunting and iconic moments in movie history.
00:08Plenty of parents don't expose their children to horror films out of concern that it may
00:12give them nightmares, so the idea of willingly allowing a child to star in a horror film
00:17may sound like a step too far for many.
00:20Fortunately, thanks to the magic of editing and solid directing advice, many children
00:24happily perform in horror films without ever fully realizing what's really happening in
00:28the movie around them.
00:29Danny Lloyd, who played young Danny Torrance in The Shining, famously had no idea he was
00:34in a horror movie, believing it to be a family drama set in a hotel.
00:38Danny has his fair share of creepy moments in the film, but he isn't the source of the
00:42horror, which made it a bit easier for Stanley Kubrick to protect him.
00:46But what happens when the villain of a horror movie is a child?
00:49Enter the 2006 remake of The Omen, starring 7-year-old Seamus Davy Fitzpatrick.
00:55Based on the 1976 film of the same name, The Omen is about Robert Thorne, an American
01:00diplomat stationed in Italy whose wife unknowingly delivers a stillborn baby.
01:05With Catherine Thorne still unconscious after the traumatic birth, the hospital's chaplain
01:08suggests that Robert adopt an orphaned newborn.
01:12Robert agrees and claims the baby as his own, without his wife knowing.
01:16The duo name the child Damien, and do their best to raise him in a loving home.
01:20Unfortunately, as Damien grows older, suspicious events begin to unfold around the family,
01:26including the horrific death of Damien's first nanny during his birthday party.
01:30Damien later attacks Catherine, zoo animals react violently at the sight of him, he gains
01:34a satanic nanny and a fiercely defensive Rottweiler, and havoc seems to follow the family everywhere
01:40they go.
01:41A clergyman involved in Damien's birth approaches Robert to tell him the truth about his son,
01:45and as it turns out, Damien's mother is a jackal, and he is the son of the devil.
01:50As Robert and Catherine have both bonded with Damien and view him as their son, they struggle
01:55to accept the truth of his lineage, which eventually leads to their demise.
01:59Everything bad that happens in The Omen is because of Damien, but director John Moore
02:04managed to keep young Seamus Davy Fitzpatrick from learning the truth of his character,
02:08fearing that it would be too much to handle.
02:16Damien!
02:17According to a report from World Entertainment News Network, Davy Fitzpatrick was merely
02:21told that he was playing Damien, and that Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles were playing
02:25his parents, Robert and Catherine.
02:27Moore and the rest of the cast and crew never told him the truth of his character, fearing
02:31the realization he was Satan's son would freak him out.
02:34As Julia Stiles tells it, they didn't get into telling him he would be playing the devil.
02:38They spared him that because he was too young to understand it.
02:41Stiles did mention that Moore would refer to Davy Fitzpatrick's terrifying look to
02:45the camera as the Damien face, and that Davy Fitzpatrick was really obedient whenever
02:50Moore needed him to make the thousand-yard stare directly into the audience's souls.
02:54With the original version of The Omen being largely considered as a classic horror film,
02:58any remake is going to have some pretty big shoes to fill.
03:01While 2006's The Omen earned mostly negative reviews from critics, Seamus Davy Fitzpatrick
03:06was praised for his performance, even earning the Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Creepiest
03:11Kid.
03:12Moore knew that they had found their Damien in Davy Fitzpatrick during his screen test,
03:16which was so unsettling, it was later used for the film's teaser trailer.
03:19In the years since, Davy Fitzpatrick has continued acting, appearing as Hank in Before Midnight,
03:24Roosevelt in Moonrise Kingdom, Teenage Bobby Fisher in Pawn Sacrifice, and a handful of
03:29short films as recently as 2020.
03:32He may not have known he was supposed to be the most feared presence on Earth, but somehow,
03:36Davy Fitzpatrick managed to pull it off, and scare audiences senseless.
03:42The Omen airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on FX.