Ellar Coltrane Kinney Salmon (born August 27, 1994) is an American actor.

They are best known for their role as Mason Evans Jr. in Richard Linklater's film Boyhood, for which they won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer.

[2] Coltrane was born in Austin, Texas, to Genevieve (née Kinney), an equine-assisted therapist for autistic people,[3] and Bruce Salmon, a musician.

[3][4] In 2001, at age six, Coltrane was cast by filmmaker Richard Linklater to play the title character in the film Boyhood; Linklater wanted to make an unprecedented film that would show a boy's coming of age, but with the actors growing up or aging on screen.

Coltrane and other members of the cast were filmed intermittently for several days at a time between May 2002 and August 2013, by which time Coltrane had turned 19; there were 45 days of filming altogether.