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!"
Although it did allow me to get away with anything: "Sorry I left my jacket on the bus. I was talking to this girl, see..." "Hah-hah, of course, boys will be boys! 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