Ellar Coltrane Kinney Salmon (born August 27, 1994) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Mason Evans Jr. in Richard Linklater's film Boyhood, for which he won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer.
Life and career Coltrane was born in Austin, Texas, to Genevieve (née Kinney), an equine-assisted therapist for autistic people, and Bruce Salmon, a musician. His parents divorced when he was nine, and his mother subsequently remarried. Coltrane's half-sister, Evelyn, was born when he was 11.
In 2001, at age six, Coltrane was cast by filmmaker Richard Linklater to play the principal 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. During Coltrane's childhood, he also appeared in various other films, including a small role in Linklater's 2006 film Fast Food Nation.
In 2016, Coltrane appeared in the Barack Obama drama film Barry, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The following year, he 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.
According to Linklater, Coltrane lives in New Mexico and is now primarily a poet.
He’s a poet, and he acts a little bit, but he didn’t have that driven personality of an actor. Maybe to his credit. He’s a pretty chill guy, so thoughtful.
Coltrane is a volunteer fireman doing EMT training. He occasionally still acts in independent films.
Personal life In 2021, Coltrane spoke of his 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", and expressed a preference to be identified with singular they/them pronouns.
He has since resumed using he/him 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
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