At the age of 15, he was cast in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders (1983). Thomas played the lead role of Ponyboy Curtis, “the soulful tagalong greaser through whose eyes we see the events of the 1950s-set film unfold”.
Based on S.E. Hinton’s bestselling 1967 novel of the same name, the coming-of-age film went on to become a cult classic. Thomas’s portrayal of Ponyboy was his breakthrough role, and it earned him a Young Artist Award.
