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“Boyhood” actor Ellar Coltrane, who starred in Richard Linklater’s Academy Award-nominated flick, moved on from Hollywood.
Coltrane, now 31, portrayed Mason Evans Jr. in the epic about a boy growing up in Texas, which was filmed over a 12-year span from 2002-14. He was 18 when the movie ultimately debuted.
The film earned high praise from critics for compelling storytelling and performances, however Coltrane admitted he’s now mostly “pretty far away from film” now and lives “in the middle of nowhere.”
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“I’ve acted in a couple of short films,” Coltrane told Variety. “One called ‘El Fantasma,’ which we filmed in Mexico City, where I play Lee Harvey Oswald, that’s really cool.
“And then I did a film in El Paso two years ago, a short film called ‘So, Who Was It This Time?’ I’ve become kind of integrated with the independent film community in El Paso, which is really wonderful.”
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He added, “I’m really inspired by the energy there and what my friends are up to. It reminds me of Austin 20 years ago.”
While he appeared in the indie “Shoplifters of the World Unite,” Coltrane admitted that he’s no longer moved by the entertainment industry.
“Really, in my life I’ve moved on,” he said. “I do manual labor, and I’m a volunteer firefighter, and I’m working on my EMT license right now. But being back in Austin at the AFS event, interacting with film people again, I am missing being on set, missing collaborating.”
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He continued, “I do very well collaborating with a director who has a passion project. When I can get into that headspace with an artist and work closely with them to figure out how I can express what they’re trying to express, I think I can do really good work.”
Coltrane, who was six when he was cast to portray the son of divorced parents played by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke, admitted that while he enjoys acting, he’s not equipped to show up “on a big set with a million producers as an actor.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” he said. “I was never really trained as an actor. I was trained by Richard and Ethan as a collaborator and part of the machine of the film. So I’m hoping for more small, independent passion projects that I can be a part of, because I have a lot to offer.”
When it comes to life after child stardom, Coltrane thinks he “did pretty well in terms of navigating that and coming out the other side not too damaged, but it’s a lot.”
“Being a child actor is always a strange thing,” he said. “A big saving grace for me, in that context of being a child actor, and later interacting with the ‘Harry Potter’ kids and other people who starred in a long-term project or started a career around the same time, for them there was something released to the world also in childhood.
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“I didn’t have to experience that, and I am grateful for that, because when I did experience celebrity, it was a lot. It allowed me to have the experience of acting and learning to do all these things and being on set.”
He added, “It allowed me to avoid being a child star, which is really difficult for a lot of people. I have a lot of compassion for people who really struggle with fame early in life.”
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