Tony Dakota
Tony Dakota is an actor, born 1982.
For a stretch around 1990, Tony Dakota was a working child actor in the Pacific Northwest, back when a good deal of American television was shot up there. He had a recurring role as Clavo on 21 Jump Street, small film parts in Who's Harry Crumb? and Immediate Family, and voice work on the animated series Captain N: The Game Master.
Then came the role that outlived all of it. He played Georgie Denbrough in the 1990 television adaptation of Stephen King's It, the small boy in the yellow raincoat in the opening scene, which is the sequence more or less everybody who saw it remembers whether they wanted to or not. That is an unusual thing to carry: a few minutes of screen time as a young child that stayed culturally live for decades, largely because Tim Curry's performance opposite him became a permanent reference point.
He did not stay in the business, and the stored record describes him as a former child actor. In 2019 he played the part again in a short fan film, which is a fairly rare instance of an adult being invited back to a role he had at seven or eight.
Movies (2)
TV (2)
Where to start with Tony Dakota
It is the reason anyone looks him up, and there is no point pretending otherwise. Watch the opening: the raincoat, the paper boat, the storm drain. Notice how much of the effect depends on Dakota playing the scene with no knowingness at all. Tim Curry gets the credit, deservedly, but the sequence needs a child who is simply and completely pleased about his boat.
The rest is short. 21 Jump Street gave him a recurring part on a series that was, underneath the teen-cop premise, considerably more serious about its subjects than its reputation suggests. Who's Harry Crumb? is a broad John Candy comedy and a pleasant enough ninety minutes. Immediate Family is the most grown-up film on the list, a quiet drama about adoption, and his part in it is very small.