- published: 20 Jun 2016
- views: 74387
Anton Viktorovich Yelchin (Russian: Антон Викторович Ельчин; born March 11, 1989) is an American film and television actor. He began performing in the late 1990s, appearing in several television roles, as well as the Hollywood films Along Came a Spider and Hearts in Atlantis (both 2001). Yelchin later appeared on the television series Huff and starred in the films House of D (2005), Alpha Dog (2006), Charlie Bartlett (2007), Star Trek (2009), Terminator Salvation (2009), and four 2011 titles: The Smurfs, Fright Night, The Beaver, and the drama Like Crazy.
Yelchin was born in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (later Saint Petersburg, Russia). His family is Jewish. His parents, Irina Korina and Viktor Yelchin, were pair figure skaters who were celebrities as stars of the Leningrad Ice Ballet for 15 years. Nationally, Yelchin's parents were the third-ranked pair team; they thus qualified for the 1972 Winter Olympics, but were not permitted to participate by the Soviet authorities (Yelchin has said the reason was unclear: "I don't exactly know what that was–because they were Jewish or because the KGB didn't want them to travel"). Yelchin's family moved to the United States in September 1989, receiving status as refugees from political oppression. As of 2007, Yelchin's mother works as a figure skating choreographer and his father as a figure skating coach, having been Sasha Cohen's first trainer. Yelchin's uncle is painter Eugene Yelchin.