Heartbreaking story of what happened to Keiko the killer whale after starring in Free Willy

In the family favourite movie Free Willy the part of the killer whale who eventually leaps to freedom was played by Keiko.

If you've not managed to see it then the killer whale plays Willy, an orca in captivity at a struggling amusement park.

A boy forms a bond with the killer whale, and eventually learns that the mean old amusement park owner is planning on killing Willy to collect on the insurance money.

The kid and his foster family hatch a plan to break the orca out before he's killed, and are able to get Willy to jump to freedom and swim away.

The audience cheer, the curtain falls and the credits roll on a happy ending, but what happened to Keiko afterwards?

Keiko the killer whale was eventually freed, but found life on the outside difficult to adjust to. (Colin Davey/Getty Images)

First off, let's turn the clock back to 1979, where Keiko the killer whale was captured in the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland.

At first they called him Siggi, before it was switched to Kago.

In 1982, he was sent to an aquarium in Canada where he was made to perform, before being sold to an amusement park in Mexico in 1985 where he was given the name Keiko.

Throughout this time, the killer whale's health was declining, and once Free Willy was released in 1993, the movie had a phone number for whale preservation in the credits.

However, lots of people calling up instead said they wanted Keiko freed, and millions of dollars were donated to get the whale out.

According to World Animal Protection, Keiko was moved to the Oregon Coast Aquarium in 1996 and regained some weight and health.

However, the killer whale became such a popular attraction that there were difficulties in getting him out of there, but in 1998, the whale was flown back to Iceland.

In the end Willy did become free, but the story isn't so simple. (Warner Bros)

He then lived in a sea pen in Iceland where he learned some skills which would be important if he was ever going to survive in the wild like catching fish.

Keiko was also introduced to other killer whales, but experts realised he was too used to humans to fully acclimatise to his own kind again.

In July 2002, he did disappear from Iceland and was later found 800 miles away near Norway, but when people found him, his behaviour soon reverted to how it was before his training.

Sadly the orca didn't have long left to live as Keiko died of pneumonia in December 2003, and there were some disagreements over whether his final years were worthwhile.

While he didn't fully reintegrate into the wild, he did go from dying in an amusement park in Mexico to spending five years in the sea.

In this life sometimes you just have to take what you can get.