Anton Yelchin - Biography

Anton Viktorovich Yelchin (Антон Викторович Ельчин; born March 11, 1989) is an American film and television actor. He began performing in the late 1990s, appearing in several television roles, as well as the Hollywood films Along Came a Spider and Hearts in Atlantis (both 2001). Yelchin later appeared on the television series Huff and starred in the films House of D (2005), Alpha Dog (2006), Charlie Bartlett (2007), Star Trek (2009), Terminator Salvation (2009), The Smurfs, and Fright Night (both 2011). Yelchin played the lead in the 2011 drama Like Crazy.

Personal life

Yelchin was born in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (later Saint Petersburg, Russia). His family is Jewish. His parents, Irina Korina and Viktor Yelchin, were pair figure skaters who were celebrities as stars of the Leningrad Ice Ballet for 15 years. Nationally, Yelchin's parents were the third-ranked pair team; they thus qualified for the 1972 Winter Olympics, but were not permitted to participate by the Soviet authorities (Yelchin has said the reason was unclear: "I don't exactly know what that was–because they were Jewish or because the KGB didn't want them to travel"). Yelchin's family moved to the United States in September 1989, receiving status as refugees from political oppression. As of 2007, Yelchin's mother works as a figure skating choreographer and his father as a figure skating coach, having been Sasha Cohen's first trainer. Yelchin's uncle is painter Eugene Yelchin.

Yelchin has stated that he "wasn't very good" at figure skating, his parents' profession. He once played in a punk band named The Hammerheads, though the group has since disbanded. He enjoys playing the guitar, having said that it gives him "a lot of fulfillment", and is a fan of acoustic blues music. Yelchin attended the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, in Tarzana, Los Angeles, California, and enrolled at the University of Southern California in the fall of 2007 to study film. As of 2009, he lives in Burbank Hills, located in the city of Burbank.

Career

Yelchin began acting at the age of ten, in the independent film A Man is Mostly Water. His earliest roles include Jackson in A Time for Dancing, Milo in Delivering Milo, Tommy Warshaw in House of D, and Jacob Clarke in the miniseries Taken. He made a guest appearance as Stewart, Cheryl David's nephew and a self-described magician (who only knows one card trick), in a season four episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and starred as Byrd Huffstodt, the 14-year-old son of Dr. Craig "Huff" Huffstodt (Hank Azaria), on the television series Huff, which ran from 2004 to 2006. In 2006, he also had a role on an episode ("Tru Love") of the series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, playing a boy who falls in love with his teacher. His biggest film recognition came for the role of Bobby Garfield in Hearts in Atlantis (2001), for which he won Best Performance in a Feature Film – Leading Young Actor at the 2002 Young Artist Awards. He also appeared in the Criminal Minds episode "Sex, Birth & Death" as Nathan Harris, a boy who has fantasies about killing prostitutes.

Yelchin starred in Alpha Dog, a crime thriller that received a US release on January 12, 2007. In the film, he played Zack Mazursky, a character based on real-life kidnap and murder victim Nicholas Markowitz. USA Todays review described the performance as "heartbreakingly endearing". After the premiere, Markowitz's mother praised his portrayal of her son. Yelchin subsequently headlined Fierce People, a drama which received a limited release on September 7 of that year, and co-starred Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland. In 2008, Yelchin played the title role in Charlie Bartlett, a film about a wealthy teenager in a public high school. Also that year, Yelchin appeared alongside the Russian duo t.A.T.u. in the movie You and I (which was filmed in Moscow during the summer of 2007), and co-starred with Susan Sarandon and Justin Chatwin in Middle of Nowhere. He next starred in two May 2009 releases: the eleventh Star Trek film, in which he portrayed 17-year old navigator Pavel Chekov, and Terminator Salvation, in which he was cast as a teenage Kyle Reese.

In 2011, Yelchin portrayed Charley Brewster in the remake of Fright Night, directed by Craig Gillespie, starred in Like Crazy, and voiced Clumsy Smurf in the film adaptation of The Smurfs. He will play the lead in the thriller Odd Thomas, and reprise his role in the sequel to Star Trek.

Filmography

Awards and nominations

External links