Ellar Coltrane Kinney Salmon (born August 27, 1994) is an American actor. They are best known for their role as Mason Evans Jr. in

Richard Linklater Richard Stuart Linklater (; born July 30, 1960) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for films that revolve mainly around suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the comedies ' ...

's film '' Boyhood'', for which they won the

Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer The Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer (Actor/Actress) is one of the awards given to people working in the film industry by the Critics Choice Association at the annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards. Winners and nominees 1990s ; ...

Life and career

Coltrane was born in

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

, to Genevieve (née Kinney), an equine-assisted therapist for autistic people, and Bruce Salmon, a musician. Their parents divorced when they were nine, and their mother subsequently remarried. Coltrane's half-sister, Evelyn, was born when they were eleven. In 2001, at age six, Coltrane was cast by filmmaker

to play the title character of sorts of the film '' Boyhood''; Linklater wanted to make an unprecedented film that would show a boy's

coming of age Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific age at which this transition takes place varies between societies, as does the nature of the change. It can be a simple legal convention or can ...

, but with the actors growing up or aging on screen. Coltrane and other members of the cast were filmed intermittently for several days at a time between May 2002 and August 2013, by the time they turned 19; there were 45 days of filming altogether. During Coltrane's childhood, they also appeared in various other films, including a small role in Linklater's 2006 film ''

Fast Food Nation ''Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal'' is a 2001 book by Eric Schlosser. First serialized by ''Rolling Stone'' in 1999, the book has drawn comparisons to Upton Sinclair's 1906 muckraking novel ''The Jungle''. The book was ...

''. In 2016, Coltrane appeared in the

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

drama film ''

Barry Barry may refer to: People and fictional characters * Barry (name), including lists of people with the given name, nickname or surname, as well as fictional characters with the given name * Dancing Barry, stage name of Barry Richards (born c. 195 ...

'', which premiered at the

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...

. The following year, they co-starred with

Emma Watson Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson (born 15 April 1990) is an English actress and activist. Known for her roles in both blockbusters and independent films, as well as for her women's rights work, she has received a selection of accolades, includi ...

James Ponsoldt James Adam Ponsoldt (born 1978) is an American film director, actor and screenwriter. He directed the drama films ''Off the Black'' (2006) and '' Smashed'' (2012), the romantic comedy-drama '' The Spectacular Now'' (2013), and the dramas '' The En ...

's film adaptation of the

Dave Eggers Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the 2000 best-selling memoir ''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius''. Eggers is also the founder of ''Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', a lite ...

novel '' The Circle'' (2017), which premiered at the

Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Productions. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. Tribeca was f ...

Personal life

Coltrane uses

singular they Singular ''they'', along with its inflected or derivative forms, ''them'', ''their'', ''theirs'' and ''themselves'' (or ''themself''), is a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. It typically occurs with an unspecified antecedent, in sentenc ...

pronouns. Coltrane has spoken of their discomfort with binary gender roles: "For me the binary gender demarcation always has felt just kind of like … a charade, like this character that I have to play.”

Filmography

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Coltrane, Ellar 1994 births 21st-century American actors American child actors American film actors Living people Actors from Austin, Texas American non-binary actors