The Changeling's Jason Butler Harner

Actor Who Plays Creepy Killer is a Veteran Stage Actor

Mar 4, 2009

The name Jason Butler Harner may not ring a very loud bell, but it's not for lack of work. Harner may be new to Hollywood, but not to the world of acting.

Harner, most recently seen in The Changeling, is much more recognizable on and off Broadway, performing in everything from Macbeth to The Glass Menagerie, and winning an OBIE for his performance in the New York Theatre Workshop’s Hedda Gabler.

In The Changeling, Harner plays real-life killer Gordon Stewart Northcott. While the film doesn’t expound on the Northcott character - the film focuses on Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), the mother of one of his victims - Harner does an excellent job using the little bit of screen time he gets to portray Northcott as a genuinely unnerving, creepy guy.

Northcott's Mother, Louisa, Helped Son Kidnap and Murder

Because the film centers around the abduction of Walter Collins, the audience doesn’t get the whole story of Northcott. “In the research I did, it's not anything new that people who do things to children have frequently had horrific things done to them, too,” Harner said in an interview. Whether or not that’s true in the case of Northcott, his story was much more twisted than the film let on.

The film suggests that Northcott’s whole reason for kidnapping these boys was to kill them, but this is not completely true. According to his nephew, Northcott molested the boys, and several papers at the time also purported that he had “rented” out the children to wealthy pedophiles who would come to the ranch.

The biggest oversight of the film though, is that the person tried and convicted for the murder of Walter Collins was not Gordon Northcott, but his mother, Louisa (Sarah Louise), who also lived on the ranch with her husband and Gordon’s father, Cyrus. During Gordon’s trial, Louisa also claimed that Gordon was actually her grandson, the product of incest between her husband Cyrus and daughter Winifred.

Harner Portrayed Serial Killer as Unstable and Unpredicable

Unlike Gordon, who was given a death sentence, Louisa received life imprisonment. She did not die in prison, though, but was paroled after serving 11 years of her sentence.

The Changeling’s audience was given only so much information about Northcott, and the rest was left to the viewer’s imagination. Harner’s performance showed an unstable and unpredictable man who acted like a scared, innocent boy one minute, and the next, like a man about to spin out of control. Like the real Northcott, Harner portrayed the man as seemingly remorseful about his crimes, and in the next breath gleefully dancing around and posing for the newspapers.

Harner can be seen in the upcoming films The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, also starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta, and the Tim Robbins’ directed Possible Side Effects.

The copyright of the article The Changeling's Jason Butler Harner in Biopic Dramas is owned by Jennifer L Mashuga. Permission to republish The Changeling's Jason Butler Harner in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.