At 11 years old, Ethan Maher already has a fairly robust IMDB page. His credits include playing Josh Duhamel’s son in the 2013 movie Scenic Route; he made an appearance in the 2015 remake of Vacation starring Ed Helms; and this spring, he was a series regular on NBC’s latest tearjerker drama, The Village.
“I love acting because it’s so fun, even the travel part of it,” says Ethan, who lives in Ashburn, but spends a lot of time in New York and Los Angeles. “It’s such a great opportunity to work with other people—I’ve worked with some amazing people in my career—and it’s just so fun. [When I’m acting], I like to think about other people and what they may be going through, so acting is a great way to experience other places and new things.”
Acting since the age of 3, Ethan’s latest role, Sammy on The Village, brought him onto the small screen and into people’s living rooms. He plays an Iranian-American 8-year-old boy who lives with his mother, who gets deported. A heavy topic for a young actor, but Ethan says he approaches his roles by putting himself in the character’s shoes.
“I like to think about what the character is actually going through and how I would feel if those things were happening to me,” he explains. “I say, ‘OK, if this happened to me, what would I do?’ Of course, sticking to the script, but how would I feel and what are some of the emotions I’d portray?”
Ethan isn’t the first one in his family to have a successful career in entertainment. His older sister, Kaitlyn Maher, was the youngest finalist ever on America’s Got Talent at just 4 years old and has since starred in a Disney show and Netflix movies. Her success inspired Ethan to follow in her footsteps.
When he’s not acting or running lines with his sister, he’s a regular kid living in Ashburn. He plays on a local baseball team, reads, plays tennis and tinkers in cybersecurity.
This summer, now that The Village has wrapped, he’ll spend some time in LA doing a voiceover project called Summer Camp Island for The Cartoon Network.
Still in middle school, Ethan looks forward to continuing to act when he’s a grown-up, but, spoken like a true kid, he says he could also see himself “maybe being a baseball player, or going into the cybersecurity world … or engineering. I have lots of favorites.”
This post originally appeared in our August 2019 print issue.
