Asa Butterfield

Asa Maxwell Thornton Farr Butterfield (/ˈeɪsə/; born 1 April 1997) is an English actor. He became known for playing the main character Bruno in the Holocaust film The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), for which he received nominations for the British Independent Film Award and the London Film Critics Circle Award for Young British Performer of the Year at the age of 11.

For his leading performance as Hugo Cabret in Martin Scorsese's drama Hugo (2011), Butterfield received considerable praise and was awarded the Young Hollywood Award for Breakthrough Performance—Male and was nominated for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer and the Empire Award for Best Male Newcomer, among other accolades. He was nominated for a British Independent Film Award for Best Actor for playing Nathan Ellis in Morgan Matthews's X+Y (2014). In 2019, Butterfield began playing Otis Milburn in the critically acclaimed Netflix comedy-drama series Sex Education.

Butterfield was born in Islington, London, and is the son of Jacqueline Farr, a psychologist, and Sam Butterfield, an advertising copywriter. He was named "Asa Maxwell Thornton Farr Butterfield" at birth, but now uses the name "Asa Bopp Farr Butterfield" on his passport instead, taking "Bopp" as a middle name after Comet Hale-Bopp, which passed perihelion on the day of his birth.

Butterfield first started acting at the age of 7 on Friday afternoons after school at the Young Actors Theatre Islington. Later, he secured minor roles in the 2006 television drama After Thomas and the 2007 film, Son of Rambow. In 2008, he had a guest role playing Donny in the television series Ashes to Ashes.

In that same year, aged 10, he played the lead role in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Director Mark Herman said that they came across Butterfield early on in the audition process. He was on the first audition tape he received and he was the third hopeful he met in person. Herman thought Butterfield's performance was outstanding, but only decided to cast him after auditioning hundreds of other boys, "so no stone was left unturned".

Producer David Heyman and director Mark Herman were looking for someone who was able to portray the main character's innocence, so they asked each of the children what they knew about the Holocaust. Butterfield's knowledge was slim and it was purposely kept that way throughout filming so it would be easier for him to convey his character's innocence. The final scenes of the film were shot at the end of the production period to prepare both him and Jack Scanlon for the dramatic ending of the film. He beat hundreds of boys to the role and also successfully passed the auditions for a role in Mr. Nobody for which he auditioned at the same time. He elected not to pursue the latter role.

In 2008, Butterfield appeared in the Merlin episode "The Beginning of the End"; he played a young druid boy sentenced to death by Uther Pendragon because he feels threatened by the boy's magic. Despite the Great Dragon's advice and the warning that Arthur cannot survive if the boy does, Merlin and Arthur, with the help of Morgana, help the boy escape to rejoin the Druids. When they are about to disappear into the forest, Arthur asks him for his name, which he says is Mordred, an important character from the Arthurian legends who is supposed to kill King Arthur. Butterfield appeared as Mordred in a number of subsequent episodes.

In 2010, he had a small part in The Wolfman. He starred as Norman Green at the age of 12 in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010), working together with Emma Thompson. The film, and his performance, both received positive reviews. At the age of 13 he played the main and title character in Martin Scorsese's Hugo, adapted from the novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Hugo was filmed from June 2010 to January 2011, it was released on 23 November 2011, and achieved critical success.

Butterfield played the title role of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin in the film adaptation of the Orson Scott Card novel Ender's Game, alongside Harrison Ford. The film was released in 2013. After the shooting of Ender's Game, Butterfield was immediately cast in coming of age British drama, X+Yas Nathan Ellis, a mathematical savant on the autism spectrum selected to compete with other gifted children on a United Kingdom team in an internationally renowned mathematics competition. The film premiered on 5 September 2014 at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released in UK cinemas on 13 March 2015. Butterfield's performance received widespread critical acclaim, and saw him nominated for the BIFA Award for Best Actor.

Later in 2013, Butterfield was reported to be in talks for a role in King of Kastle and in May, he was cast in The White Circus with his fellow cast member from Hugo, Chloë Grace Moretz. In early 2014, Butterfield was cast in a film adaptation of Ten Thousand Saints, which was released on 14 August 2015.

In November 2015, he joined the ensemble cast of Shane Carruth's third film, The Modern Ocean, alongside Anne Hathaway, Keanu Reeves, Daniel Radcliffe and Jeff Goldblum.

In 2016, he starred as Jacob "Jake" Portman in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, alongside Eva Green. He also starred as Gardner Elliot in the film The Space Between Us and as Sebastian in The House of Tomorrow in 2017.

In 2018, Butterfield was cast in the main role of Otis Milburn on the Netflix comedy-drama series, Sex Education. The series was released on 11 January 2019, to critical acclaim.

Other work

Butterfield enjoys making and producing music, and released a mashup of the songs "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus and "Making Plans for Nigel" by XTC. In late 2012, Butterfield co-designed a turn-based video game for iPad with his father and brother called Racing Blind. The game was released to the App Store on 7 April 2013.

Butterfield is involved in competitive Nintendo gaming. In 2017, he played in the Nintendo World Championships, where he was eliminated early in the invitational. He is an enthusiastic player of competitive Super Smash Bros. and has signed with eSports team Panda Global under the tag "Stimpy". His first appearance with the organisation was at Genesis 6.

Butterfield was nominated in the category "Most Promising Newcomer" of the 2008 British Independent Film Awards, but he lost the award to Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire. He was nominated for the NSPCC Award (Young British Performer of the Year) in the London Critics Circle Film Awards, which was ultimately won by Thomas Turgoose. MTV Networks' NextMovie.com named him one of the Breakout Stars to Watch for in 2011.

Film

Television