THIS BOY’S LIFE

Star Ellar Coltrane looks back at a life on film.

It’s hard to think of another film this decade so built around its lead actor. Total Film finds Ellar Coltrane in a contemplative mood in October 2019 when we catch up to reflect on the our no. 4 of the decade. His adolescence traced over almost his entire school life, Coltrane grew up on screen like no one else before.

“It’s definitely very surreal, for sure,” he muses. “To have the first wide exposure as an actor, and to also have it be such a personal thing… It’s a perspective of me and my kind of existence that was everywhere.” Director Richard Linklater had previously explored time and liminal states, most notably in his Before trilogy, but Boyhood took those concepts to new levels.

“It definitely will always be something I return to in life,” continues Coltrane.

“Right now, it’s probably best to sort of step away from it. But I feel like, as I get older, it will be really valuable to look back at it, and have these periods of my life captured in such a vivid way.”

Coltrane auditioned aged just six, and the idea of a 12-year commitment was too abstract a concept for his young mind to comprehend. “It’s a strange thing talking about the magnitude of the commitment. It is over such a long period of time. But the actual time that we spent consecutively working on it at any given time was never longer than four or five days.” Luckily for Linklater – and audiences – Coltrane’s enthusiasm for the project never waned, even in his teenage years.

What was tough for Coltrane was the press circuit – from Sundance to the Oscars, he was on promo duties for a full year – and hailing from Linklater’s heartland of Austin, Texas, meant he was approached frequently in the aftermath. “It was very overwhelming for me,” he says. “But I feel I’m at a much better place with it now, five years later. Now, when people come up to me, it makes me really happy. After this long, if someone still wants to talk to me about it, it’s real.”

He has just reunited with his screen father Ethan Hawke for TV series The Good Lord Bird, and for now, Coltrane is enjoying exploring characters who are further removed from himself. “Boyhood was so rooted in life, and my life to a certain degree,” he muses. “It’s cool, now, to start branching out into work that’s a little further out.”

BOYHOOD IS AVAILABLE ON DVD

AND BLU-RAY.