Jason James Richter was propelled to fame when he was just 13-years-old when he played Jesse in the family movie.
He won the Young Artist Award for Best Leading Young Actor in a Feature Film, and also picked up two nominations a the MTV Movie Awards.
He would later go on to reprise the role in 1995’s Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home and 1997’s Free Willy 3: The Rescue.
So what happened to him?
Now 38, Richter has continued to act, and his last movie – 3 Solitude – is dated 2017.
He’s also been working behind the camera: in 2009’s Tekken he was also an assistant director, and he was a producer on 2015’s Vicious.
On the small screen, in the late 1990s Richter leant his voice to an episode of Rugrats, and has also been in Bones (2009), Life’s A Pitch (2014) and Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour (2011).
On stage, he’s also worked in a fair few credits – including Edward Albee’s The Zoo in 2013.
He was photographed with the cast of Free Willy in 2013 for a reunion event, 20 years after its release.
He said at the time in an interview with The Daily Beast: “It makes me feel old, dude. I’ve had kids come to me and say, ‘Oh, I loved your movie when I was a kid and I became a marine biologist.’ It’s crazy.
“There were rumours that I got a face tattoo. That I got into a car accident. That I became a drug addict.
“All this stuff. If you don’t tell them anything, people will just make up crap, even if the film is 20 years old.”
Free Willy is on ITV at 11:25am on Easter Monday.
