9 Movie Animals Who Outperformed Their Human Masters

4. Keiko in Free Willy

While the famously slump-finned orca whale was credited as starring in all three Free Willy films, a good deal of the whale work in the sequels was done with animatronic cetaceans, so we'll only count his appearance in the first one. Forget the story of the troubled kid learning to be a responsible citizen - all we cared about watching this movie was that poor Willy escape the confines of his low-rent amusement park tank and return to the wild. Of course, the whale who played him had a much less Hollywood story. Keiko was captured at a young age and spent years performing tasks that were similarly degrading to Willy's. After this film brought him international attention, there was a multi-million dollar effort to return him to the wild. But those efforts were cut short when Keiko died of pneumonia at 27 years old. The lesson here is that the movies lie to you and life ends in tragedy, children.