He isn't quite a household name yet but, at the age of 19, child star-turned-teen heartthrob Asa Butterfield has built up a resume a Hollywood veteran would envy. The British actor has worked with Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton, starring alongside some of cinema's biggest names, including Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Kingsley, Emily Blunt and Anthony Hopkins. "I've never really gotten starstruck," he says.
Butterfield began acting at age eight, after a casting director saw him at his after-school drama club in north London. The movie that made Hollywood sit up and pay attention, 2008 Holocaust drama The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas earned Butterfield a British Independent Film Award nomination. Hugo, Martin Scorsese's 2011 love letter to the film industry, proved to be his big break, with his own lead performance earning him a Critics' Choice Award nomination for best young actor. He has since transformed himself into a poster boy for young adult drama through such films as 2013's Ender's Game, where he played the titular role alongside Harrison Ford. This year has seen him cast as the reluctant young hero of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, a performance which moved director Tim Burton to praise Butterfield's "special kind of sensitivity." Now he stars in sci-fi fantasy The Space Between Us, co-starring Gary Oldman.
For the young London-based actor, working with the legendary director was the fulfilment of a career-long dream. "When people asked me which director do you want to work with, I'd say Tim Burton. It's lovely having him welcome you somewhat into his imagination and ideas, which always blow you away," he says. "He is always very spontaneous. The way he works is very chaotic and you have to be on your toes."
In The Space Between Us, Butterfield plays Gardner Elliot, the first boy born on Mars who visits Earth for the first time at the age of 16. The movie releases in December. Butterfield and co-star Carla Gugino (San Andreas, Batman v Superman) spent two weeks walking with weights on their ankles to get used to how a Mars resident might cope in the more tiring gravity of Earth. The character is like many Butterfield has taken on -- an abandoned or orphaned child, an oddball who must negotiate a world he barely understands. "I'm always trying to find roles which are original in one way or another, and stories which are original," he says. "I never really play the kid who's got the perfect life. Usually he's missing a parent or two."
This month Butterfield began filming World War I drama Journey's End, and there have been persistent rumors of superhero movies, although it's not a genre that particularly interests him.
