I keep thinking that Asa Butterfield is American due to his old-fashioned name -- maybe Moravian or Amish -- but he's actually British, born in Islington, 30 minutes by underground from the British Museum. It has pubs called The Earl of Essex, The Duke of Cambridge, and the Pig and the Butcher. Can't get more British than that.
He got his start in horribly depressing movies like After Thomas and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, 2007, which of course were on my "run away fast" list.
Then came Hugo, 2011, a fantasy with an ending that made me cringe -- the photo looks like two boys have the adventure, but it's actually a boy and a girl. When Hugo announces that he's got a girlfriend, the adults throw confetti, high-five each other, and scream with joy. That happened to me every time I mentioned a girl, no matter how casually: "A girl in my class did a book report on Finnegan's Wake." "Hallelujah, he's straight! He's normal! We don't have to worry anymore! Here, have some money and the keys to the car!"
I didn't see Ender's Game, 2013, because the original novel was written by the horribly homophobic Orson Scott Card, or A Brilliant Young Mind, 2014, because the brilliant young math prodigy gets a brilliant young girlfriend.
The novel version of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children contains no heterosexual romance, but in the 2016 movie version, there are three of them. It's boys and girls gazing into each other's eyes all the way down.
Are you noticing a pattern here?
Then Came You, 2018: A boy falls in love with a dying girl. This seems to be quite a trope. Why do girls never fall in love with dying boys? Of course I'm not seeing it.
Time Freak, 2018. At least Asa has a gay-subtext relationship with Skyler Gisondo en route to winning the Girl of His Dreams.
Your Christmas or Mine?, 2022. Isn't Asa a little young to graduate to Christmas romcoms?
Asa's biggest role to date is in the tv series Sex Education, 2019-23. He plays Otis, a boy whose mom is a sex therapist, so he and his friends get the idea of opening a clinic to solve teenagers' sex problems. There are some gay characters, but Otis is straight. And naked a lot.
More after the break. Caution: Explicit
I can't believe they show a teenager actually masturbating on tv, even if it is a prosthetic.
Or that Asa would post a photo of him masturbating in real life. The internet says this is him, anyway.
The briefest glance at Asa's instagram makes it incredibly obvious that he's gay in real life. He doesn't even try to closet himself. There are dozens of photos of all-guy groups, frolicking in the sun, boating, on Greek and Italian vacations....
And with his boyfriend, hugging, holding hands, late for a fancy date, lounging in the pool, and having a picnic, while comments are all about how lucky he is to have found such a hot boyfriend, and how cute they look together.
So, dude, why the overwhelming "girls are the meaning of life" themes of your movies? Why not a single gay character?
I guess you're right. You are rather a dick.
See also: Time Freak: Skyler Gisondo and Asa Butterfield play boyfriends who get girlfriends
The homoerotic hijinks of Skyler Gisondo's crew
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