Ellar Coltrane uses a flip phone.
The star of “Boyhood,” whose entire maturation process is seen on screen by each person who contributed to its $21,808,498-and-counting box office take, had to search to find this antiquated property.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you on a flip phone right now. That’s why the reception is so poor,” Coltrane said. “I had to look for a while, but there are a couple that are still being made. It’s like vintage now.”
This fits with Coltrane’s portrayal of Mason, the boy that “Boyhood” follows through adolescence. But Coltrane insists that while some aspects of the filming did echo his opinions — like the monologue 17-year-old Mason spouts on the inanity of Facebook and smartphone use — he’s not nearly as extreme as the movie would have people believe.
Spending 12 years on a project, especially one with a collaborative environment like the one director Richard Linklater promotes, can lead to a certain bleeding together of actor and character. Linklater encouraged Coltrane to give input on the story from the very beginning, urging him to build from his own experience. This input grew as the project — and Coltrane — aged.
“It was sort of always his idea to have the story be influenced by my life,” he said. “But it’s also a very different story that’s very much Richard’s story.”
Linklater gave the actors, particularly Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette — who play Mason’s father and mother — a lot of freedom when it came to the basics of roles. But occasionally, there was a decided idea of where the action should go.
For one scene, Linklater wanted a dramatic moment where a young Mason gets a haircut. Coltrane remembers he was asked to grow out his hair for that scene. Because it was shot during the summer heat in Texas, he felt a sense of relief at losing the hair rather than the betrayal the scene exhibits in the movie. But that was a rare occurrence.
“For the most part…he didn’t alter my appearance very much,” Coltrane said.
Coltrane came to the project from an unconventional background. He hadn’t acted professionally before. Up to that point, he had been homeschooled, a process his parents continued during filming.
“My parents didn’t agree with the public schooling system and took it upon themselves to teach me in a different way,” Coltrane said.
In many ways, he experienced a completely different childhood than the one portrayed in the movie. Coltrane said he felt like “that’s one of the strange parts of filming, that it was kind of an alternate life.”
The novelty of the experience allowed him to maintain interest in the project. Lorelei Linklater, who played Mason’s older sister Samantha and also happens to be the daughter of Richard Linklater, reportedly tired of the project halfway through and asked to be killed off. Coltrane never felt the need to abandon the film.
“I was always right there,” he said. “I didn’t have public school that I was obligated to, so I kind of enjoyed the obligation and having something to be responsible to.”
He also appreciated the universality that came through the project. Partly due to his homeschooling and upbringing, he couldn’t relate to Mason’s background. But at the same time, he claimed his ability to still personally identify with Mason testifies to the grand scheme of the film as a whole.
“There’s so much that I do relate to, so that’s the interesting thing to me,” he said. “That someone who did have a more traditional childhood, just more traditional circumstances, we’d still go through pretty much the same emotional trials as a teenager.”
There has been Oscar buzz surrounding “Boyhood” and Coltrane’s performance has surfaced as a possible Best Actor contender. But Coltrane gets flustered when talking about his future. He knows he wants to continue acting or at least “work on some kind of art.”
Coltrane said he doesn’t place much stock in the Oscar rumors. He’d appreciate it, he said, but it isn’t his focus.
“The reward is what we’ve already gotten: just the appreciation of audiences,” said Coltrane. “To have people receive it [‘Boyhood’] and express their appreciation in such a genuine way is really the best prize we could ask for.”
