Boyhood star Ellar Coltrane now: Where is the actor who played Mason in Richard Linklater’s 2014 film?

It's been nearly a decade since Richard Linklater's Boyhood wowed viewers with its centrepiece gimmick-that-wasn't: an actual youngster growing up on camera for twelve years. Now, as the film celebrates its anniversary with a series of retrospective screenings, the obvious question resurfaces: what happened to that boy?

Who is Ellar Coltrane and what happened to the Boyhood actor?

The answer, according to a new interview with Variety, is refreshingly ordinary: Ellar Coltrane, now 31, has traded film sets for fire stations.

Ellar was only six years old when Richard cast him in 2002, and he had no idea he was signed on to a project that would follow him into adulthood. Boyhood, which was shot in brief bursts over twelve years, employed Ellar's real-life growing up as raw material, weaving in elements from his actual boyhood rather than ageing him with cosmetics or CGI.

By the time the film hit theatres in 2014, Ellar was 19 and suddenly, briefly, famous. After receiving the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer, he continued to perform for a few years, landing supporting parts in Shoplifters of the World (2020), The Circle (2017), and The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018).

But the spotlight never quite fit. He moved to a more peaceful way of life in New Mexico in 2020, leaving his long-time home base in the Texas Hill Country. Ellar has decided to pursue EMT training while serving as a volunteer firefighter. He still occasionally appears in independent projects, so he hasn't completely given up acting. But when asked directly about his relationship to the business that raised him on camera, his message was simple and unambiguous: “I’ve moved on.”

Unlike many performers who grow up in the public eye, Ellar has said he was largely spared that pressure, since audiences didn’t actually see Boyhood — and by extension, him — until he was already 18. Even then, the sudden attention was, by his own account, a lot to absorb.

More than a decade later, as a new generation discovers Boyhood through anniversary screenings, Ellar Coltrane himself seems to have written his own next chapter — something closer to normal life.

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