{"id":620670,"date":"2026-08-04T22:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T22:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/620670\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T22:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T22:17:14","slug":"what-happened-to-the-boyhood-boy-ellar-coltrane-on-linklaters-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/620670\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened to the ‘Boyhood’ Boy? Ellar Coltrane on Linklater’s Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Richard Linklater<\/a> released \u201cBoyhood<\/a>\u201d in 2014, moviegoers had never seen anything quite like it. Filmed over the space of 12 years, the coming-of-age classic followed a Texas family living through divorce, moving and growing up, with the cast returning at intervals to film episodes as the children grew up. The groundbreaking result came thisclose to winning the Oscar for best picture, with Patricia Arquette, who played the family\u2019s mom, winning best supporting actress, and Ethan Hawke<\/a>, who played the father, nominated for supporting actor. But what happened to the boy of \u201cBoyhood\u201d \u2014 Ellar Coltrane<\/a> \u2014 and Lorelei Linklater, who played his sister?<\/p>\n

\n\tLorelei Linklater, the director\u2019s daughter, is a painter and actress who has appeared in several independent films since \u201cBoyhood.\u201d Coltrane, now 31, says he lives \u201cin the middle of nowhere,\u201d and is pursuing several interests: He\u2019s a volunteer fireman, he\u2019s doing EMT training and is gets involved in occasional independent films. But though he\u2019s had a few roles such starring in the indie \u201cShoplifters of the World Unite,\u201d he\u2019s not driven to pursue film and TV stardom. \u201cI\u2019ve moved on,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

\n\tUnlike many child actors who experienced too much fame too early, Coltrane thinks he was spared that kind of pressure because the world didn\u2019t see the finished product until he was 18 \u2014 although even then the amount of attention was somewhat overwhelming. <\/p>\n

\n\tIndependent Film Company\u2019s 12th anniversary release of \u201cBoyhood\u201d (representing the 12 years of filming) is currently playing in more than 100 theaters across the U.S. and in Canada through Mongrel, with a special filmed Q&A included this week. Additional live Q&As and special screenings will roll out throughout August. <\/p>\n

\n\tColtrane looked back on the experience of shooting \u201cBoyhood\u201d over 12 years, remembering the fun, scary and embarrassing moments along the way. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tEthan Hawke, left, and Ellar Coltrane onstage during the \u201cBoyhood\u201d 12-Year reunion Q&A in Austin. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKelly Zhu<\/p>\n

\t\tAs a child, you went to theater classes through Zach Theater in Austin, and then met your aunt\u2019s agent who became your agent. How did you end up auditioning for \u201cBoyhood\u201d? Do you remember much about what they told you when you were just 6 years old?\t<\/p>\n

\n\t What I remember is meeting Richard. Both of my parents are performers, so I think they were definitely supportive and understood the idea of me going into performing arts, but it wasn\u2019t something that they set up or pushed me into. It all just kind of happened. I remember them telling me about who Richard was to them, being artists in Austin. They knew a lot of people that were in \u201cSlacker\u201d and he was a real hometown hero. I remember them telling me, this is really cool, this is different than the other auditions you\u2019ve gone to. I don\u2019t know how many callbacks it was, but it was several, and there was no script at that point, so it wasn\u2019t at all a traditional audition where I\u2019m reading sides. I think he was just kind of getting to know me more than anything. <\/p>\n

\t\tDo you think he had other kids he was considering?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was an open casting call, so there probably hundreds of kids that they were considering. There were a number of homeschool kids that were being considered specifically, because he knew it would be easier to work with a kid who didn\u2019t have to be in school five days a week. I remember in one of the callbacks, he asked me to bring in some of my art, my drawings. The piece of the drawing that I brought in was on the back of a poster for a band called Joe Rockhead that my dad played in, in the \u201980s and \u201990s in Austin. And Richard was a fan, and so I remember him looking turning the page around and being like, \u201cWhat is this? Why do you have this poster? And I\u2019m like, that\u2019s my dad\u2019s old band. <\/p>\n

\t\tWhen did it dawn on you that you were going to keep returning every year, every couple years? Like, did you understand that at first, or did it take a little while to really get that?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI was a smart kid. I understood as much as a 6-year-old can. I understood that I would be returning every year, but there was no way for me to comprehend what 12 years is, or what that really represents in my life. It was much later, once I was 17 or 18, that I started to understand like how just how significant it was in my life. It was fun. It was like a summer camp. It never felt like a burden really. <\/p>\n

\t\tWhat was working with Richard like? Were you ever scared or felt pressured?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRichard is very much an actor\u2019s director, and he and Ethan had such an industrious working relationship at that time, writing the \u201cBefore\u201d movies and they had a really powerful collaborative dynamic that they had built together, and it was really wonderful to be invited into that, and be taught how to partake in that process of writing collaboratively. <\/p>\n

\t\tDid you get to improvise?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThere was very extensive workshopping every year. There was some improvisation in the writing room, but more so just a lot of requests for my input. So even if I wasn\u2019t improvising in the moment, I was often using my words, and using pieces of my experience and what I was going through in the different years, and I was encouraged to manipulate my dialogue to be more natural for myself to speak as a child.<\/p>\n

\t\tThere were a lot of pretty tense scenes \u2014 do you remember being worried about the adults arguing, particularly with the alcoholic stepfather?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI grew up in a pretty tumultuous household, so it didn\u2019t seem shocking at all to me. That was kind of just how adults were. The big one was the violence at the dinner table with Marco\u2019s character. I remember that moment, with the dinner plate and just how viscerally scary that was. Even though I knew it was acting, and everybody laughs in between takes. There was a lot that was done, probably for our benefit, for the kids to try to break up the tension, and I think we didn\u2019t do very many takes of that. <\/p>\n

\n\tI rewatched the film for the first time in a number of years a couple weeks ago at the Austin Film Society reunion screening, and there were lots of things that I was stricken by that landed differently now. That scene definitely affected me more watching it than it ever has before, and I was a lot more aware of myself as a vulnerable child experiencing this traumatic thing. Even within the artifice of the film, it\u2019s still scary.<\/p>\n

\t\tWas there ever a time you wanted to quit? I know Lorelei wanted to be written out at one point. \t<\/p>\n

\n\tNo, not at all. I mean, when it released, when I became famous and was going around doing a million Q&A\u2019s and parties, I didn\u2019t enjoy that part so much. But I never wavered in production. I loved it. It was a really wonderful experience for me.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou said it was like summer camp, did you play with the other kids and make friends?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tReally just Lorelei. All the other kid characters are so transient. More so Richard and Ethan and Patricia. I was such an odd kid. I I didn\u2019t have a lot of friends my own age, even in my personal life, just being homeschooled and being raised by the arts community in Austin. Also Rodney Becker, the production designer. I went on to work under him in the art department for a number of years after \u201cBoyhood\u201d released. <\/p>\n

\t\tWhat was it like as you got to be a teenager, since teenagers are figuring out so much stuff \u2014 were you ever self-conscious about growing up on-screen?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI was a pretty cocky teenager. Like around 14 or 15, when I have the bangs and everything, that was a pretty awkward phase. I think I was pretty self-conscious. But even still, with the kissing, I\u2019m kissing Megan Devine in that in that episode, and I was pretty confident in that. One of the funny things about that phase of the film for me is that I was a really wild teenager, I was getting into a lot of trouble, and that is so peripheral in the film. It\u2019s just kind of implied that there\u2019s other stuff going on that we\u2019re not seeing, that this person is experimenting with drugs and whatever else, but it\u2019s not really in the film. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut I do remember I showed up to set probably when I was 17, very high on marijuana one time, and was extremely anxious and self-conscious, and that scene is terrible. Needless to say that scene did not make it into the final cut. I never did that again.<\/p>\n

\t\tWas Linklater\u2019s idea for Mason to be into photography, or yours?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThat was me. It\u2019s kind of funny because (unit photographer) Matt Lankes, rest in peace, outside of set, he gave me photography lessons and was a big part of that developing in my life before I was ever in the film. My interest in photography definitely was fueled, if not initially inspired, by being on set and watching Matt work. He made the book<\/a> and so we would do those portraits every year and he was always working with antique film equipment and his work practice was very intricate, and I found that really inspiring. <\/p>\n

\t\tWhat do you think about this experience of making a movie over so many years? It\u2019s pretty unusual. \t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s fantastic. It\u2019s magical. It\u2019ll be interesting to see what comes of Richard\u2019s new long-term project (\u201cMerrily We Roll Along\u201d), and if other people try to emulate that. Because it\u2019s a gimmick in a way, and it also very much works. <\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s also kind of a crazy thing to sign a child up for.<\/p>\n

\t\tExactly \u2014 as smart as a kid as you were, how could you have really known what you were agreeing to? \t<\/p>\n

\n\tI think I did pretty well in terms of navigating that and coming out the other side not too damaged, but it\u2019s a lot. Being a child actor is always a strange thing. 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. I didn\u2019t 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. 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.<\/p>\n

\t\tCatch us up on what kind of things you\u2019re pursuing now?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI live in the middle of nowhere, and I\u2019m pretty far away from film. I\u2019ve acted in a couple of short films. One called \u201cEl Fantasma,\u201d which we filmed in Mexico City, where I play Lee Harvey Oswald, that\u2019s really cool. And then I did a film in El Paso two years ago, a short film called \u201cSo, Who Was It This Time?\u201d I\u2019ve become kind of integrated with the independent film community in El Paso, which is really wonderful. I\u2019m really inspired by the energy there and what my friends are up to. It reminds me of Austin 20 years ago. Really, in my life I\u2019ve moved on. I do manual labor, and I\u2019m a volunteer firefighter, and I\u2019m 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. <\/p>\n

\n\tI do very well collaborating with a director who has a passion project. When I can get into that head space with an artist and work closely with them to figure out how I can express what they\u2019re trying to express, I think I can do really good work. But just showing up on a big set with a million producers as an actor, I don\u2019t know how to do that. 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\u2019m hoping for more small, independent passion projects that I can be a part of, because I have a lot to offer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Richard Linklater released \u201cBoyhood\u201d in 2014, moviegoers had never seen anything quite like it. Filmed over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[257130,18,262031,117,21016,19,17,327,103513],"class_list":["post-620670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-boyhood","tag-eire","tag-ellar-coltrane","tag-entertainment","tag-ethan-hawke","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-richard-linklater"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117039559213458581","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}