Boyhood star Ellar Coltrane has traded Hollywood sets for a life far removed from the spotlight.
The 31-year-old actor, who spent 12 years growing up on screen for Richard Linklater’s acclaimed 2014 film, now lives “in the middle of nowhere,” works manual labour and is training to become an EMT, he told Variety in a Q&A published Tuesday, August 4.
“I’m pretty far away from film,” Coltrane said.
While he has appeared in a handful of short films and remains connected to the independent film community in El Paso, Texas, Coltrane admitted that he has largely “moved on” from acting as a career.
Coltrane played Mason Evans Jr. from age 6 to 18 in Boyhood, which was filmed between 2002 and 2014. He said the experience felt more like summer camp than traditional Hollywood, helping him avoid some of the pressures that came with childhood fame.
“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,” he noted. “I didn’t have to experience that and I am grateful for that, because when I did experience celebrity, it was a lot.”
Coltrane starred alongside Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette in the Oscar-nominated coming-of-age drama.
