The boy who endured 12 years growing up in a Hollywood movie: The star of this summer's hit film began at age six - and finished at 18. But his real Truman Show story is even more amazing...
- Boyhood tells the story of a youngster from Texas who grows up on camera
- Directed by Richard Linklater, it has rave reviews and is tipped for an Oscar
- Lead actor Ellar Coltrane was just six when he was recruited for the part
- Amid billboard hype, the real-life story of young star has passed unnoticed
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It is being hailed as the film of the decade, a fictional coming-of-age movie starring a little boy from a broken home in Texas who literally grows up on camera.
Boyhood, by the controversial director Richard Linklater, has garnered five-star reviews and is already tipped to win an Oscar following the most protracted filming schedule in movie history.
But amid the billboard hype, the true and very human real-life story of its young star appears to have passed unnoticed.
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Unique: Ellar with Ethan Hawke, his father in the film, Boyhood
Ellar Coltrane, the leading actor, was just six years old when he was recruited to play ‘Mason Jr’, the central character whose childhood, adolescence and departure to university are captured in minute, sometimes excruciating, detail in documentary style.
Coltrane was filmed throughout his childhood, a 12-year schedule that only ended at the age of 18.
So, extraordinarily, a cast including stars Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke, Ellar’s on-screen parents, agreed to meet once a year and pick up from where they left off.
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ShareSo consuming has it been of time and energy, that director Linklater described Boyhood as the ‘life project’.
It was certainly a leap of faith for the professional actors taking part, who had to work around more regular commitments.
For much of this time, Arquette was the star of Medium, a popular American drama series.
At one point Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter who plays the part of Ellar’s sister, started to have doubts about continuing.
Changing faces: Ellar Coltrane played Mason Jr in the film Boyhood as an eight-year-old, left, and ten-year-old right
The cast met just four or five days a year while Ellar was young. Later they would gather for a month at a time, with Ellar describing the occasions as like ‘summer camp’.
In total there were 39 shooting days, although between times Linklater and Ellar would meet and talk about his day to day life so it could be incorporated into the film.
Much of the dialogue is improvised and no one, including the director, knew in what direction the storyline would go.
Almost uniquely for a Hollywood movie, wigs and make-up were banned and the actors wore their own clothes. So tight was the commitment to realism that is began to affect their private lives, too, as Patricia Arquette explains:
‘Richard and I had a conversation. He said: “You’re not going to do plastic surgery or anything in the next 12 years are you? Because that is not the person this mom would be.”
‘In this movie you see the kid growing up, and me and Ethan just getting old.’
The result, praised lavishly by the critics, is a film very different from Linklater’s previous hits, such as School Of Rock, and Dazed And Confused.
Linklater hasn’t disclosed how much he paid Ellar but the film was shot on a shoestring budget of about £120,000. Ellar proudly told his grandmother Kathy Horton that it was enough for him ‘to buy you a car’.
Ellar Coltrane was filmed throughout his youngser years in Boyhood, which is being tipped to win an Oscar. He is pictured here aged 11, left and 12, right
According to Universal Pictures, the two-and-three-quarter hour epic is ‘totally fictional’. But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, while the film-makers may have changed a few names, the darkest aspects of its story are all too real – and that it has more in common with The Truman Show than a typical Hollywood drama.
Indeed, as Ellar now admits, the sadness and confusion of his real life – including a hippy upbringing and a mother with multiple relationships – outstrips even the fictional emotion.
And that it was only by taking part in the film that he has come to understand and accept his own dysfunctional past in which, for much of the time, he lived as a recluse.
Touchingly, Ellar says it was the actress Patricia Arquette, who plays his mother, who helped him learn to love his real life mother.
Painfully shy, Ellar now says the film underplays the misery of his boyhood.
‘I did have a somewhat unusual childhood,’ he says, ‘much more unusual than Mason’s. Almost everyone I know comes from a broken home, and it’s something you have to come to terms with.
‘A lot of people whose parents are divorced end up resenting their parents for it, and one of the most powerful things for me in this film is seeing how vulnerable the parents are and how hard they’re trying to do it right, even though they’re deeply flawed.
Growing up fast: Ellar Coltrane met with the cast around four or five times a year when he was young. He is pictured here as a 13-year-old, left and as a 14-year-old, right
‘I hope this film can help other people of my age to appreciate their parents for who they are – even though they’re broken people just like everyone else.’
In the film, Mason’s mother goes from husband to husband and he is seen suffering as he is forced to move repeatedly to accommodate her ‘bad life decisions’, which bring him a confusing array of father figures.
It is not hard to see where Linklater drew inspiration. In real-life, Ellar’s mother Genevieve, the daughter of a Sixties hippy, married three times.
First she married an older man, Patrick McGarrigle, with whom her mother was once in love, then moved on to a colourful musician, Bruce Salmon, stagename Brewski Sal Mineo, with whom she had Ellar. He was born on August 27, 1994, and the family moved into a small bungalow in Austin.
As that marriage collapsed, Genevieve moved on to a landscaper six years her junior, whose company had struggled financially and had twice filed for bankruptcy.
She insisted on home-schooling her son, and as a result he grew up a virtual recluse, finding one of his few friends in the film’s director.
‘I had a rough relationship with my mother,’ says Ellar, who also describes his parents as ‘strange people who took a bizarre approach to parenting’.
‘But Patricia [Arquette] helped me overcome that. There were scenes that put things in perspective for me in a large way.’
It is a surprise to learn that, despite his own rackety beginnings, Ellar’s family had conventional, affluent roots.
His grandfather, Girard Kinney, is a distinguished architect in the Texas state capital of Austin, who married beautiful young school teacher Kathy Horton.
Ellar Coltrane began filming at the age of six and finished in his late teens. He is pictured left at 16 and right at 18
But when Ellar’s mother Genevieve was seven, Kathy ‘turned hippy’, as she puts it.
She walked out on her enraged husband, taking Genevieve and her younger brother, Genesis, and sister, Lea Marie, with her and determined to bring them up as free spirits.
Today, Kathy Horton lives in an old school bus parked in the Texas wilderness. It is decorated with an eclectic mix of Sixties memorabilia and art works by Ellar and family members.
A Cat Stevens album plays.
Kathy’s partner Jonathan ‘J’ Browning Jones recalls watching Ellar grow up. ‘We babysat him. He was home schooled but in his case, home school was no school. Genevieve wasn’t into text books. And because he didn’t go to school, he didn’t get to do the things normal boys do. He didn’t have friends. They lived like recluses.’
Kathy, 69, says that with Bruce often absent on tours and Ellar a sickly child – he had allergies to milk and wheat – Genevieve became lonely and the marriage crumbled.
‘It was tough on Ellar to have to watch them,’ she says. ‘They withdrew from each other and lived in separate rooms in the same house.’
The cast of Boyhood includes stars Patricia Arquette, pictured, and Ethan Hawke, Ellar¿s on-screen parents
It was Ellar’s good looks that first brought him attention from the outside world. Genevieve’s sister, Lea Marie, then 28, was pursuing her dreams of becoming a model.
‘Lea Marie and I were going to a modelling agency one day and I just happened to be babysitting Ellar,’ says Kathy, ‘so he was with us. The agency interviewed Lea Marie but then they said: “You know what, we like the way Ellar looks,” and they signed him. He was so cute. He had put water on his hair to style it. Even at that age, he wanted attention.’
A year later, Linklater put Ellar, then six, under contract. Known for controversial fact-based films – including one that campaigned for the release from prison of a man who had committed a gruesome murder – the director explained that the boy would be filmed over 12 years and the family agreed.
Universal Studios insist the script is fictional. But J and Kathy say they have no doubt it was ‘inspired’ by the boy’s chaotic and solitary home life.
‘This is Ellar’s story and Linklater knew it,’ says Kathy.
‘When Richard first met Ellar, Bruce and Genevieve were breaking up. Ellar was going through a very destructive phase,’ recalls J.
Ellar’s mother did not believe in imposing any discipline on the boy.
‘No matter how much he acted up, she would allow it.’
‘Then, one day Ellar said, “Mom’s with her special friend.”’ The ‘friend’ was Russell Womack, a landscape gardener, now 43.
Kathy takes up the story. ‘Genevieve was still married to Bruce but she was seeing Russell. Not long after, Bruce left and Russell moved in. Ellar didn’t say he was upset but he was bottling it up inside.’
Genevieve then married Russell in Las Vegas, in practical terms leaving Ellar with three fathers.
Patrick McGarrigle confirmed in an interview with The Mail on Sunday that he was around from the day Ellar was born. ‘Bruce raised Ellar and then Genevieve remarried but everyone is very close to everyone else.’
The newlyweds bought a ranch on a backroad in the countryside half an hour from Austin, where Genevieve now works as an equine therapist.
Neighbours told The Mail on Sunday they seldom saw Ellar. Genevieve by now was bringing up a new child, her daughter with Russell, and when he was 16, Genevieve finally allowed Ellar to attend the local high school.
In the film, Mason’s father is a musician – like Bruce – and he has two stepfathers, who are stern to the point of being abusive.
But his family insist that’s where the film departs from reality. ‘Nobody was strict or abusive with Ellar,’ says Kathy, who believes Russell was good for Ellar.
Ellar says, however, that the most therapeutic development for him has been watching his life on film. His dysfunctional childhood made him very depressed. ‘I went to a really dark place, completely, as a result of my parents splitting up,’ he says.
‘I didn’t let myself relate to some of the more painful elements at the time. But watching the movie, some of the scenes with the stepfathers and the broken home feel very familiar. I’m finally starting to free myself. I have finally begun my childhood.’
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