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"Ellar Coltrane may seem like any other normal 19-year-year old, but he's the furthest thing from it. For the past 12 years\u2014since he was seven\u2014Ellar's been acting in filmmaker Richard Linklater's groundbreaking movie Boyhood. Nothing like this has ever been before, so it's totally changed the game. And after seeing himself grow up right before his own eyes, he's changed as well.\n\nBoyhood follows Ellar's character's life as he goes from an adorable little boy to an adult, showing all of the ups and downs families have over the span of such a long period of time. Along with his sister (played by the director's daughter Lorelei Linklater) and parents (played by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette), this film gives us the closest possible look into all the crazy things that happen while growing up. It should come as no surprise that, with 12 years of work under their belts, the actors really did become something of a real-life family.\n\nEllar was cast for the project when he was six years old, but he had no idea what he was in for. \"My memories from the beginning are pretty vague. I remember the audition process a little bit and I have scattered memories from the first year of filming,\" Ellar says. \"It's more hitting me now, kind of in the aftermath of the first few times I saw it. It really dawned on me how crazy it all was. Growing up, both of my parents were artists and worked on all kinds of bizarre projects. It didn't seem that strange to me I guess, but as a six-year-old there's no way to understand how long 12 years is when you've only been alive half that long, but also how an experience can affect and define you.\"\n\nSince the movie was only filmed for around three days each year, after a week of rehearsals and building the scripts, Ellar's real, off-screen life took the main stage and he didn't need to think about the process very often. \"The long nature of the project allowed a lot of us to become very lost in the artistic process and forget about the end goal of it being a movie and people watching it,\" Ellar says. \"Most of the project was kind of distant. The purpose of doing it was to do it.\"\n\nLast fall, the longest scheduled film shoot in history wrapped, and Ellar was finally able to see the finished project. And it changed everything. \"I've undergone more physiological and emotion development in the past six months than I have in the past six years,\" he says. \"The first couple times I watched, it was hard to really think much. There were so many emotions and curiosity that had been building up for so long. Everyone as a teenager struggles with self-identity and feeling real and important and valid. We feel really disconnected from ourselves and everyone around us, and to see all these little parts of myself that taken out of context might be embarrassing or awkward, but seeing it all put together like that is very comforting. It's terrifying, but it's actually proof that I'm real. I don't know a world where I didn't work on Boyhood, so I don't know the person I would be if I hadn't. In a lot of ways, this film defines who I am.\"\n\nSo what do you do after filming a movie for the past 12 years? Take on the world of art head-on, of course. \"I want to keep acting and I'm interested in filming, visual arts\u2014everything. I want to go to school, I think that's next,\" Ellar says. \"I've found that being lost in art and the process of creation is really the only thing that gives me solace, so I want to go wherever that takes me.\"\n\nCan you imagine growing up in front of a camera? Check out the trailer below, then be sure to tell us what you think of it!\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.teenvogue.com/story/boyhood-ellar-coltrane>