An Alaskan woman was in for the shock of her life when she attended a showing of The Revenant with her son and a friend. It turns out she was in the Leonardo DiCaprio movie without her knowledge.
Alaska Dispatch News reports that Doreen Nutaaq Simmonds’ son recognized his mother’s voice reading a poem in a voiceover.
In the scene from The Revenant, a member of the Pawnee tribe helps DiCaprio’s character build a shelter to protect him from the harsh winter. The poem plays quietly as the characters build the shelter.
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The poem, spoken in the Alaskan Inupiaq language, was initially understood by Simmonds’ friend, who whispered, “Hey! I can understand that!”
Then Simmonds’ son spoke up, telling his mother “That’s you, Mom!”
“I was so engrossed in what the Indian was doing, I hadn’t paid attention,” Simmonds said. “That’s when my ears opened.”
The audio is Simmonds reciting an Inuit poem featured in the recording of John Luther Adams’ Earth and the Great Weather. She recorded the poem 27 years ago.
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Despite the use of her voice in The Revenant, she was not notified or compensated for it. A representative for 20th Century Fox told U.K.’s The Guardian that “the track was a preexisting musical track from 1994 licensed from John Luther Adams/New World Music, who granted us the rights.”
The Revenant, which won the Golden Globe for best movie of the year, had a production budget of $135 million, and so far has garnered almost $445 million in revenue worldwide.