A Look Back at Anton Yelchin’s Career

Russian-born actor Anton Yelchin tragically passed away on Sunday at the age of 27. Most recognisable for his role in the Star Trek reboot, Yelchin began his acting career at the age of nine. Here is a look back on some of the talented actor’s standout roles.

STAR TREK (2009)/STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS (2013)/STAR TREK BEYOND (2016)

Yelchin took up the baton of Pavel Chekov from Walter Koenig, who played the ensign in the TV series. Speaking to StarTrek.com, Koenig described Yelchin as “a terrific young man and a talented actor.” Yelchin then went on to reprise the role of Chekov in the franchise’s sequels Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond, the latter of which will premiere next month.

ALPHA DOG (2006)

A seventeen-year-old Yelchin shined in the crime drama as Zack Mazursky, who is kidnapped when his brother can’t pay back the money he owes. EW’s Sundance Diary at the time describes Yelchin as chatting excitedly, “interrupting himself only to snap at his mother for obsessively rubbing his cold hands.”

LIKE CRAZY (2011)

Starring opposite the likes of Felicity Jones and Jennifer Lawrence, Yelchin played Jacob Helm, an American student that falls in love with a British exchange student. Director Drake Doremus and writer Ben York Jones compiled a 50-page outline for the film, but let Yelchin and his costar Jones improvise most of their dialogue creating a naturalistic performance that perfectly conveyed the highs and lows of young love.

CHARLIE BARTLETT (2007)

The comedy-drama’s director, Jon Poll, described the then teenage Yelchin as “extraordinarily prepared and hard working… and very deep and rich as well.” In 2008, Poll told Collider that “[Yelchin]’s got a wisdom beyond his years.” The same can’t be said for Yelchin’s character, Charlie Bartlett, who begins to dispense therapeutic advice and prescription drugs to fellow students at his new school in order to become popular.

GREEN ROOM (2015) 

In the indie-thriller, Yelchin plays a member of a punk rock band that become entangled in the affairs of a murderous gang of neo-Nazi skinheads after playing a set at their bar. Yelchin starred alongside original Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart although he told The Huffington Post at the time that he and Stewart didn’t discuss it saying that he “stayed away from intentionally and I think [Stewart] did too… That’s the kind of wonderful thing about film culture, is the interaction between films and who works on what, where they were before, and now what they’re doing now, and that inevitably informs how people view a film.”