The Waltons
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$6 Million
"I learned by doing, and there’s no substitute for on-the-job experience."
It's hard to name an actor with the same wholesome, all-American presence of Richard Thomas. You've got Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Tom Hanks, and maybe Ron Howard. It's a short list of actors who inspire trust on sight. Since his days as John Boy Walton on The Waltons (1971-82), Richard Thomas has enjoyed a long career both embracing his wholesome persona, and playing against type on projects like The Americans (2013-18).
Good Night, John Boy
"The idea of working very early on with older actors, from whom you obviously had a great deal to learn, this is part of the great thing about being a child actor. You’re apprenticing. You’re learning all the time."
Born June 13, 1951 in Manhattan to New York City Ballet dancers, and owners of the New York School of Ballet, Barbara and Richard S. Thomas, the young Richard knew show business from birth, and took to stage long before he took to film. At just seven years old, Thomas made his debut with a Broadway production of Sunrise at Campobello (1958). Within a year he was sharing the screen with Christopher Plummer and Julie Harris on A Doll's House (1959) for Hallmark Hall of Fame on NBC. Before long he was a fulltime working actor, featuring in daytime soaps like The Edge of the Night (1961) and As the World Turns (1966-67). By the end of the sixties he was co-starring with Paul Newman in Winning (1969), and Bruce Davidson in Last Summer (1969).
When he landed the part of John Walton, Jr. in The Waltons (1971), what would have been a breakthrough role for most young actors was just another day at the office for Richard Thomas, who'd already established himself as a capable television actor and a budding movie star. In fact, he declined to renegotiate his contract between seasons, not wanting to commit to another year lest it get in the way of other offers.
The Waltons became a defining show of the 1970s, with the sign-off of "Good night, John Boy" becoming something of a catchphrase. Just a few seasons into the show's run, Thomas scored a Best Actor in a Dramatic Series Emmy in 1973. "It was totally shocking. I didn’t expect to win. I wrecked my car on the way there that evening."
The show also afforded Thomas opportunities to play more diverse characters, featuring as the villain in You'll Like My Mother (1972) with Patty Duke. Here he showed that he could portray a character as vicious as John Boy was wholesome. A TV movie based on The Red Badge of Courage (1974) saw him in the lead as Private Henry Fleming, and he returned to the genre with another Hallmark Hall of Film presentation, All Quiet on the Western Front (1979) at the end of the decade. In 1980 he returned to Broadway for Fifth of July (1980), and featured in the science fiction cult classic Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). Throughout Thomas' career the actor has made a point of covering a lot of ground, embracing his farm-boy persona one year and bucking it the next with more complex and dark roles, allowing him to hold position as a likable lead without getting fenced into these parts.
Richard Thomas was never hungry for work in the 1980s, but most of his work during this decade would be on stage or in one-off TV movies like Go Toward the Light (1988). His next culture-defining role would come with IT (1990), based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. Richard Thomas played the adult version of lead character Bill Denbrough alongside John Ritter as Ben Hanscom, Annette O'Toole as Beverly Marsh, and of course, Tim Curry as Pennywise in a decade-defining villain role.
IT has been credited for raising the bar for TV movies and miniseries. The two-part event proved that television productions need not be regarded as the cheaper version of "real movies." Rather, with looser time constraints, they could actually cover bigger stories than anything you'd see in theaters. It would be fair to say that IT helped to pave the way for the streaming renaissance we see today, with Hulu, Netflix and even Youtube creating films and miniseries as ambitious as any Hollywood release.
The American
Richard Thomas has never really taken a break from acting. When you don't see him on TV, that's just because he's busy on the stage with Richard III (1994) or As You Like It (2005), or performing for the modern day Shakespeares like David Mamet in Race (2009-10). Still, it's nice when a favorite actor returns to the mainstream, and it's especially nice when they do it in a big way like Richard Thomas did for the spy drama The Americans (2013-18).
The FX series followed Russian operatives and FBI agents in a continual game of cat and mouse, with Richard Thomas turning in a memorable performance as FBI counter-intelligence investigator Frank Gaad. The part allowed Thomas to bring a complex and surprising approach to what could have been a fairly cliche authority figure in the hands of a less ambitious actor.
Recent roles for Richard Thomas include Billions (2017-19), Blue Bloods (2017) and The Blacklist (2019). While many young actors, particularly those who play wholesome all-American boys, have difficulty growing into adult actors, Richard Thomas seems to relish the greater variety of roles afforded to him in his later career. Of course, that's not to say that The Waltons doesn't continue to hold a special place in the actor's heart.
"'Good night, John-Boy' has always been with me and I love it."
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