Mason Thames
Quick Snapshot: Everything You Need to Know
| Detail | Information |
| Full Name | Mason Thames |
| Date of Birth | July 10, 2007 |
| Age (2025–2026) | 18 years old |
| Birthplace | Dallas (McKinney), Texas, USA |
| Height | 5’7″–5’8″ (170–173 cm) |
| Hair / Eyes | Brown / Brown |
| Father | Byron Thames (actor) |
| Sister | Brooke-Madison Thames (professional ballerina) |
| Breakout Role | Finney Blake — The Black Phone (2022) |
| Biggest Film | Hiccup — How to Train Your Dragon (2025) |
| Girlfriend | McKenna Grace (confirmed February 2026) |
| Estimated Net Worth | $1–2 million |
| Early Training | 4 years of ballet; performed professionally age 6–9 |
| Favorite Movie | Spider-Man 2 (2004) |
| Zodiac | Cancer |
Who Is Mason Thames?
There’s a certain kind of actor who doesn’t need to announce himself. He just shows up on screen, and something in you sits forward.
Mason Thames is that kind of actor.
He was 14 years old when he carried The Black Phone — a Blumhouse horror film set almost entirely in a basement — opposite Oscar nominee Ethan Hawke. He was 17 when he stepped into the biggest animated franchise DreamWorks ever built, opening How to Train Your Dragon to $197 million worldwide in its first weekend. And he’s been doing all of this from a starting point most people outside the industry would never guess: years of professional ballet training in a suburb north of Dallas.
This guide covers everything worth knowing about Mason Thames — his age, height, how his career developed, his relationship with McKenna Grace, and why people in Hollywood are paying close attention.
Age and Early Life: Growing Up in McKinney, Texas
Mason Thames was born on July 10, 2007, in Dallas, Texas — specifically the suburb of McKinney, about 30 miles north of the city. He turned 18 in July 2025.
He didn’t grow up in a Hollywood household, but performance was woven into the family fabric. His father, Byron Thames, is an actor and his older sister Brooke-Madison Thames pursued dance professionally, eventually becoming a ballerina. Mason followed Brooke into ballet at five years old, and what started as something to try became four years of serious, rigorous training.
By the time Mason was six, he was performing with a professional international ballet company — its youngest cast member at the time. He stayed with it through 2016, appearing in productions including The Nutcracker. That background rarely gets the credit it deserves when people talk about his acting. It should. The discipline that comes from years of ballet — the precision, the body awareness, the ability to hold stillness without stiffness — shows up on screen in ways most people can’t quite put language to but absolutely feel when they watch him.
When he wasn’t training, he was watching films with his dad. The Avengers, Pacific Rim, and — notably — the animated How to Train Your Dragon series. He idolized Hiccup. At seven years old, he told people he wanted to play that character someday.
He wasn’t kidding.
How Tall Is Mason Thames?
Mason Thames stands approximately 5’7″ to 5’8″ tall, or about 170 to 173 centimeters — confirmed through multiple red carpet appearances and verified sources from 2025.
For reference, that’s roughly the same height range as Tom Holland and Tom Cruise, two actors who never let a number on a measuring tape define their career trajectory.
What matters more than the measurement is what he does with it. Four years of professional ballet training gave Mason a lean, athletically controlled build and a relationship with physical space that most young actors spend years trying to develop artificially. He fills a frame naturally. Directors notice. Casting directors notice more.
At 18, his height has likely stabilized, though minor growth into the early twenties remains possible. His brown hair, brown eyes, and controlled physicality suit emotional drama and action sequences equally — a combination that’s served him well across both horror and blockbuster fantasy.
The Black Phone (2022): The Performance That Launched Everything
The project that put Mason Thames on the radar of everyone in the industry was The Black Phone, directed by Scott Derrickson and produced by Blumhouse Productions. Mason plays Finney Blake, a quiet and sharp-minded 13-year-old who is abducted by a masked serial killer known as The Grabber — played with deeply unsettling restraint by Ethan Hawke — and held in a soundproof basement. The only link Finney has to hope is a disconnected black phone on the wall that somehow keeps ringing with messages from the killer’s previous victims.
Mason was 14 during production.
Working opposite a caliber of actor like Hawke in a physically limited, emotionally intense setting is the kind of thing that exposes every gap in a performer’s toolkit. There was nowhere to hide. No ensemble to blend into. No action sequence to fill the space where real emotion should be.
What Mason delivered wasn’t just competent — it was quietly devastating. Director Derrickson reportedly gave him significant creative latitude, encouraging him to bring his own instincts to Finney’s fear and resilience rather than following a prescribed emotional map. The result was a performance that felt completely real in the way most adult actors work years to achieve.
The Black Phone grossed more than $161 million worldwide on a $16 million production budget. Critics praised it as one of the finest horror films of its year, and Mason’s name appeared in nearly every significant review. One person who watched closely was Dean DeBlois — the director of DreamWorks’ entire How to Train Your Dragon animated trilogy. As soon as he saw the film, he knew he had found his live-action Hiccup.
Full Filmography: Mason Thames’ Career Timeline
Mason made his screen debut in 2018 on Apple TV+’s For All Mankind at age 11 — a quietly steady entrance into the industry.
Television
- For All Mankind (Apple TV+, 2018–2022) — Danny Stevens, child and teen arc
- Walker (The CW, 2021–2022) — Young Cordell Walker
Film
- The Black Phone (Universal / Blumhouse, 2022) — Finney Blake ⭐ Breakout role
- Incoming (2024) — Supporting role
- Monster Summer (2024) — Co-starring with Mel Gibson; directed by David Henrie
- How to Train Your Dragon (DreamWorks / Universal, 2025) — Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III ⭐ Career-defining role
- The Black Phone 2 (Blumhouse, 2025) — Finney Blake
- Regretting You (Paramount, 2025) — Miller Adams; co-starring McKenna Grace; adapted from Colleen Hoover’s novel
- New Year’s Rev (2025) — Comedy; starring alongside Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey
- The S**theads (in production) — Comedy with Dave Franco
- How to Train Your Dragon sequel (DreamWorks, 2027) — Confirmed return as Hiccup
The pattern is hard to misread. Mason Thames went from a horror movie that launched his career to the star of one of DreamWorks’ highest-grossing opening weekends in less than four years. For an 18-year-old, that kind of momentum isn’t just impressive — it’s historically rare.
How to Train Your Dragon (2025): Turning a Childhood Dream Into a Job
Casting Mason Thames as Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III in the live-action How to Train Your Dragon wasn’t a conventional audition story. Dean DeBlois watched The Black Phone, saw what Mason could do with emotional nuance and physical stillness, and pursued him directly for the lead.
The role demanded both qualities in equal measure. Hiccup is the emotional core of the entire franchise — a character defined by the tension between who he’s expected to be and who he actually is. The physical dimension of the role required the kind of body control that Mason’s ballet training had already built into him.
In order to create the kind of realistic physical chemistry that would communicate on screen, preparation entailed working with animal-handling consultants and spending a lot of time with a full-scale Toothless puppet. In interviews, Mason has described getting emotional during costume fittings — the recognition that a dream he’d held since he was seven was actually happening.
The movie’s June 2025 opening weekend receipts of $84.6 million domestically and $197 million worldwide in its first three days surpassed even optimistic forecasts the strongest opening performance in the franchise’s history. The cast also includes Nico Parker as Astrid and Gerard Butler returning as Stoick the Vast.
DreamWorks confirmed a sequel for 2027, with Mason returning as Hiccup.
Mason Thames and McKenna Grace: How Their Relationship Developed
For much of 2025, one question circulated across entertainment coverage and social media searches more than any other: are Mason Thames and McKenna Grace actually together?
As of February 2026, the answer is definitively yes — and the path there is worth tracing properly.
Before filming Regretting You, they met in 2024 while traveling to see Deadpool and Wolverine in an Uber, something neither of them could have anticipated.
Mason later gave PEOPLE an honest account of the encounter, saying, “Instead of it just being very, super-duper weird for a first meeting, it was really amusing.” and so awesome. We just clicked immediately.
Speculation about their relationship escalated in April 2025 when a TikTok showing them sharing a playful kiss went viral. Mason later told Seventeen that the video was McKenna’s idea, and that the public reaction to it struck him as “hilarious.”
In June 2025 — opening weekend of How to Train Your Dragon — they were photographed holding hands while walking through SoHo in New York City. Neither had yet publicly confirmed anything.
McKenna was present at Mason’s 18th birthday celebration in July 2025. Her gift included a Spider-Man wallet, backpack, and a handwritten card that Mason described as “too special” to discuss publicly.
In October 2025, they traveled to Berlin together for a special screening of Regretting You.
The formal confirmation came on February 18, 2026, when Mason posted a photo carousel from Paris on Instagram — including a photograph of them kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower.”This is my favorite post…” McKenna remarked, “for neutral reasons.”
McKenna Grace was born on June 25, 2006, making her approximately one year older than Mason. She’s widely known for her work in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Gifted. Together, they’re among the most talked-about young couples in Hollywood right now.
The Ballet Years: Why His Training Matters More Than People Realize
People who dismiss Mason’s ballet background as a biographical curiosity are missing something important about why he works so well on camera.
He started training at five, following his sister Brooke-Madison into a discipline that demands more physical and mental rigor than most adults ever voluntarily take on. By six, he was performing with a professional international ballet company — not as a guest or novelty, but as its youngest working member.
He spent years learning how to inhabit a body deliberately: where it is in space, how movement reads from a distance, how to hold an emotion in a pose without overstating it.
These are not small things for an actor.
Director Scott Derrickson reportedly noted early in The Black Phone production that Mason had something genuinely unusual: the ability to emotionally process every moment on screen without performing the processing. In other words, he doesn’t show you that he’s feeling something.
He just feels it, and the camera catches it. That’s rarer than most film coverage suggests — and it traces directly back to years of being trained to make technical difficulty look effortless.
What Separates Mason Thames From the Field
Three things consistently distinguish Mason from the broader landscape of young talent coming through Hollywood at the same time.
Emotional honesty without artifice. When he cries in The Black Phone, you’re not watching an actor crying. You’re watching a character break. That kind of presence at 14 doesn’t arrive through effort alone — it suggests a natural instinct refined by genuine discipline.
Physical intelligence. The ballet training did something measurable: it gave him a body that already understands where it is and what it communicates. That’s why he could step into the physical demands of How to Train Your Dragon quickly and make them feel authentic rather than rehearsed.
Deliberate career construction. His filmography isn’t scattered. The Black Phone established dramatic range. How to Train Your Dragon proved franchise viability. Regretting You targets a different and enormously passionate audience — Colleen Hoover readers. The S**theads with Dave Franco tests pure comedy. Each move answers a different question about what kind of actor he is. At 18, that kind of selectivity usually comes from experienced representation. In Mason’s case, it seems to come from genuine instinct about his own work.
Fashion, Culture, and the Industry’s Broader Recognition
Beyond film sets, Mason has been expanding into cultural spaces with clear purpose.
He went to a Louis Vuitton fashion show in Paris in June 2025, indicating that high-end companies view him as a person worth interacting with, not just because of box office numbers.
His 2025 Teen Vogue cover, which featured him alongside McKenna Grace and Leah Sava Jeffries as the New Hollywood Class of 2025, put him squarely in the discussion of who currently defines young Hollywood. The framing in that feature — describing him as someone who “helmed the live-action How to Train Your Dragon” alongside two other actors “breaking through in a major way” — is industry-facing recognition, not fan coverage.
Net Worth and Financial Trajectory
Current estimates put Mason Thames’ net worth between $1 million and $2 million, drawing from acting fees, endorsements, and brand partnerships that have grown substantially since How to Train Your Dragon‘s commercial success.
For context: he hasn’t graduated high school yet.
The projects already locked in for 2025 through 2027 suggest that number is heading in one direction. The Black Phone 2 extends a proven horror franchise. Regretting You opens the door to the Colleen Hoover audience — arguably the most engaged fanbase in contemporary popular fiction. The S**theads with Dave Franco demonstrates range into comedy. And the How to Train Your Dragon sequel in 2027 confirms him in a multi-picture franchise deal with DreamWorks.
The financial picture is secondary to the career picture. What’s being built here — at 18 — is the kind of filmography most actors spend their thirties hoping they’d started earlier.
Personal Life and Interests Off Camera
Away from production, Mason is an enthusiastic and specific fan of the Spider-Man films — particularly Spider-Man 2 (2004), which he names as his all-time favorite. He’s mentioned in multiple interviews that playing Spider-Man remains a personal ambition. Given where his career currently sits, it’s not an unreasonable aspiration to take seriously.
He grew up watching action and science fiction films alongside his father Byron, and those early viewing habits clearly shaped his taste and his approach to story. In interviews, he’s consistently more interested in talking about the work than the visibility — a quality that tends to mark careers built to last decades rather than just burn bright for a few years.
Frequently Asked Questions
How old is Mason Thames?
Mason Thames is 18 years old. He was born on July 10, 2007, in Dallas, Texas, and turned 18 in July 2025.
How tall is Mason Thames?
He stands approximately 5’7″ to 5’8″ (170–173 cm). His ballet training gives him a lean, physically controlled presence that tends to photograph taller than his actual measurement.
Who is Mason Thames’ girlfriend?
McKenna Grace. Mason publicly confirmed their relationship in February 2026 with an Instagram post from Paris that included a photo of them kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower.
Are Mason Thames and McKenna Grace still together?
Yes. After months of speculation — including a viral TikTok in April 2025 and hand-holding photographs in New York in June 2025 — Mason made the relationship official on Instagram in February 2026.
What is Mason Thames best known for?
He is best known for playing Finney Blake in The Black Phone (2022) and Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III in the live-action How to Train Your Dragon (2025), which opened to $197 million worldwide in its first weekend.
What happens in The Black Phone?
Mason plays Finney Blake, a 13-year-old who is kidnapped by a masked serial killer called The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) and locked in a soundproof basement. A disconnected phone on the wall begins ringing with calls from the killer’s previous victims, who help Finney find a way to fight back. Mason reprises the role in The Black Phone 2, also released in 2025.
What’s Next for Mason Thames
The period between 2025 and 2027 appears to be a turning point in a career that has already advanced more quickly than nearly any similar trajectory in recent Hollywood history.
The How to Train Your Dragon sequel in 2027 will test whether Mason Thames can build on a franchise launch, not just benefit from the goodwill of an established story. Regretting You introduces him to an audience that didn’t discover him through horror or fantasy. The S**theads with Dave Franco will show whether comedy is another genuinely available register, or just an experiment.
Each project is asking a specific question about who Mason Thames is as an actor. The answers, so far, have all pointed the same direction.
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