Jack Gleeson, the exceedingly nice chap who played royal dingus King Joffrey on Game of Thrones, has said he plans to give up acting now that he’s done with the massive HBO show. The reason behind his departure right at the height of his fame is pretty straight forward. “I’ve been acting since age 8,” he said back in 2014. “I just stopped enjoying it as much as I used to.”
Yes, that’s right: Gleeson spent over a decade in the acting trenches before making it as one of the best bad guys in the history of TV. You’ve probably seen him during this time and didn’t even realize it. One of his most famous cameos came in 2005’s Batman Begins, where he’s the little boy who meets Batman on the roof of his building. That’s not his only role alongside Christian Bale, either. It turns out he was also in 2002’s Reign Of Fire as an uncredited survivor of the dragon apocalypse.
You can catch Gleeson in the front row of the video below watching Bale recreate a scene from The Empire Strikes Back and gasping in awe and wonder at the famous Darth Vader reveal. But behind the scenes, Jack was having some serious problems, according to MTV News.
“I just kind of had to wet myself,” he revealed during a panel at New York Comic-Con. “I was like an 8-year-old or 9-year-old kid and I had to piss my pants on set of Reign of Fire. I tried to be as cool and collected as possible, and then I acted my socks off. I didn’t let it affect my performance.”
Gleeson credits the scene as a formative experience that taught him a lot about filming under tough circumstances. After all, once you’ve peed your pants during a scene, things can’t get much worse for you. It’s a shame he ended up leaving Game of Thrones long before Daenerys and her dragons made it to King’s Landing. We think whoever ends up facing her could use some experience wetting themselves.
