Boyhood star Ellar Coltrane has shared what he’s been up to since stepping away from mainstream Hollywood — and it’s a world away from life on a movie set.
Coltrane, now 31, is best known for his starring role as Mason in Richard Linklater’s 2014 coming-of-age drama Boyhood. The film, which was shot over the course of 12 years with the same cast, chronicled Mason’s childhood and adolescence in Texas. The movie also starred Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as Mason’s divorced parents, and the director’s daughter, Lorelei Linklater, as Mason’s sister.
While the former child actor has appeared in several independent films since concluding Linklater’s years-long project, including Summer Night (2019), The Get Together (2020) and Spiral into the Yellow Void (2025), he has largely left acting behind.
“I live in the middle of nowhere, and I’m pretty far away from film,” Coltrane told Variety. “I’ve moved on. I do manual labor, and I’m a volunteer firefighter, and I’m working on my EMT license right now.”
He shared that he has recently become “integrated with the independent film community in El Paso, [Texas], which is really wonderful. I’m really inspired by the energy there and what my friends are up to.”
“It reminds me of Austin 20 years ago,” he added, reiterating that, “really, in my life I’ve moved on.”
He admitted, however, that attending screenings at the Austin Film Society and “interacting with film people again,” made him realize how much he missed “being on set” and “collaborating.”
“I do very well collaborating with a director who has a passion project. When I can get into that headspace with an artist and work closely with them to figure out how I can express what they’re trying to express, I think I can do really good work,” Coltrane explained of his preference for smaller independent films over massive studio productions.
“But just showing up on a big set with a million producers as an actor, I don’t know how to do that. I was never really trained as an actor,” he said.
“I was trained by Richard and Ethan as a collaborator and part of the machine of the film. So I’m hoping for more small, independent passion projects that I can be a part of, because I have a lot to offer.”
Coltrane was seven years old when he began filming Boyhood, and 19 when it was released. The movie became a critical success, landing six Oscar nominations at the 2015 ceremony, including Best Picture and Best Director. It ultimately only won one of its nominations: Best Supporting Actress for Arquette.
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