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Barret Oliver

Barret Oliver’s screen career was relatively brief, but it included a run of leading roles that remains closely associated with 1980s cinema. Born in Los Angeles on August 24, 1973, Oliver worked in minor television and film roles before starring as Bastian in the 1984 movie The NeverEnding Story. That performance was followed by two more prominent parts. Oliver played the lead in Tim Burton’s short film Frankenweenie, then starred as the cyborg Daryl in the 1985 film D.A.R.Y.L. His work in D.A.R.Y.L. earned him a Saturn Award. Together, those roles gave his early career a distinctive place in the decade: a child actor trusted to carry projects built around unusual young protagonists. Oliver continued acting through the late 1980s. His final feature-film role was Willie Saravian in Paul Bartel’s 1989 ensemble comedy Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills. It closed a compact screen career that moved from smaller appearances to starring roles and then ended before adulthood became the focus of his filmography. His later work took a markedly different direction. Oliver became a printer and photographer, specializing in nineteenth-century photographic processes including collodion and Woodburytype. This was not simply a private interest: his work has appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions and has also been used in films. In 2007, Carl Mautz Publishing released his book A History of the Woodburytype. That second career makes Oliver’s story more unusual than a standard former-child-actor profile. His work moved from appearing in front of the camera to exploring the historical processes behind image-making itself, connecting his acting and photographic careers through two very different sides of the moving and still image.