Ellar Coltrane

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's film Boyhood, for which they won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer.^[2]

Ellar Coltrane
Coltrane in April 2015
Born	Ellar Coltrane Kinney Salmon[1] (1994-08-27) August 27, 1994 (age 30) Austin, Texas, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	2002–present

Life and career

Coltrane was born in Austin, Texas, to Genevieve (née Kinney), an equine-assisted therapist for autistic people,^[3] and Bruce Salmon, a musician.^[4] Their parents divorced when they were nine, and their mother subsequently remarried.^[5] Coltrane's half-sister, Evelyn, was born when they were 11.^[3][4]

In 2001, at age six, Coltrane was cast by filmmaker Richard Linklater to play the title character in the film Boyhood; Linklater wanted to make an unprecedented film that would show a boy's coming of age, 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 which time Coltrane had turned 19; there were 45 days of filming altogether.^[6] During Coltrane's childhood, they also appeared in various other films, including a small role in Linklater's 2006 film Fast Food Nation.^[7]

In 2016, Coltrane appeared in the Barack Obama drama film Barry, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.^[8] The following year, they co-starred with Emma Watson in James Ponsoldt's film adaptation of the Dave Eggers novel The Circle (2017), which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.^[9]

Personal life

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."^[10] Additionally, they have expressed a preference to be identified with singular "they/them" pronouns.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
2002	Lone Star State of Mind	Young Earl Crest
2005	Faith & Bullets	Thomas Chaney Jr.
2006	Fast Food Nation	Jay Anderson
2009	Hallettsville	Young Tyler Jensen
2014	Boyhood	Mason Evans Jr.	Filmed from 2002–2013
2016	Barry	Will
2017	The Circle	Mercer Regalado
	The Last Movie Star	Shane McAvoy
	Blood Money	Victor
2018	The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot	"The Clerk"
2019	Summer Night	Jameson Ford
2020	The Good Lord Bird	Salmon Brown
2021	El Fantasma	Lee Harvey Oswald
2021	Shoplifters of the World	Dean