A working actor from age 9, Asa Butterfield has grown up on movie and TV sets.
Now 19 and poised to take on adult roles, the star of teen sci-fi romance The Space Between Us, opening Friday, is in no hurry to turn his back on characters that make the most of their optimistic, innocent sides.
“I find the best acting comes from when you are accessing something that is slightly childlike and you’re a little more connected to your emotions and they’re a lot more on the surface,” said the British actor, who earned praise for Holocaust drama The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and as the title character in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.
“I play a lot of dramatic roles where the character is seen as kind of innocent and pure,” said Butterfield while on a quick publicity swing through Toronto. “I don’t know why. My face,” he added laughing.
The Space Between Us fits that trend with Butterfield playing 16-year-old Gardner Elliot, born in a Mars colony and orphaned when his astronaut mom dies in childbirth. As the first person born on the red planet, the scientists who raised him (and kept his existence a secret) doubt Gardner’s unique physiology could withstand a trip to Earth.
But he has other plans, including finding out who his dad is and meeting up with Tulsa (Britt Robertson) a Colorado teen he’s been chatting with online. Desperate to get to Earth, yet naïve about what life there is all about, Garden tries to educate himself by watching old movies and quizzing Tulsa, who has no idea he’s a few million kilometres away.
Butterfield was nursing a head cold and gratefully took a cup of tea, eyeing a comfy couch and admitting, “I’m fighting the temptation right now to sprawl across this sofa.”
“Be our guest,” he was told and the teen stretched out with a happy grin.
He said his character is named for two familiar screen personas: Peter Sellers’s “Chauncey Gardiner” in Being There and Elliott from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.
Since The Space Between Us is based on an original story and not taken from a YA novel, Butterfield said he had “a lot of creative freedom” to make his character “unique and bring him to life, make him my own.”
He likes Gardner’s optimism, saying he also has that streak. “I like to take this view of the world and Gardner takes that to an extreme.”
Among Butterfield’s upcoming films is his first adult role, the WWI drama Journey’s End, based on English writer R.C. Sherriff’s celebrated play about British officers of various backgrounds awaiting battle in a dugout in Northern France. Sam Clafin, Toby Jones and Paul Bettany also star.
“I feel like I’ve been growing up gradually on film. It’s a very natural process and my character in Journey’s End is the most innocent of the characters,” said Butterfield, who describes him as “this young hopeful who wants to come to the front line and fight for his country and he has no idea what’s waiting for him.”
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