Jasen Fisher makes anxious children easy to care about. His short screen career has a worthwhile centre in The Witches, where his natural playing makes the threats matter, even if the boy himself remains lightly drawn.
Fi1m perspective
Jasen Fisher gives the witches a boy worth worrying about. As Luke Eveshim in Nicolas Roeg’s The Witches (1990), he is appealing and believable in a film more interested in threatening him than examining his character. We were frightened for Luke because Fisher makes the boy’s vulnerability credible beside Anjelica Huston’s delighted cruelty. It is a performance we value for keeping the child’s experience clear when the adults have the more extravagant things to do.
His screen work covers a short progression from supporting child to lead and back to an ensemble. Ron Howard’s Parenthood (1989) introduced him as Kevin Buckman, the anxious son of Steve Martin’s character, and his naturalness there gave an early indication of what he could offer. After The Witches, he played Ace, one of the Lost Boys, in Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991). There are no further screen credits after the age of eleven, leaving a small body of work with one substantial leading role at its centre.
In The Witches, Roeg puts that straightforward appeal to useful work, although Fisher is not the chief reason we recommend the film. Huston supplies the alarming excess, while Mai Zetterling’s Helga Eveshim brings warmth and a welcome rest from the grotesques. Fisher gives us reason to stay concerned about the boy alongside those stronger adult presences. The film could have spent more time making Luke a person beyond the danger he faces, and we should not mistake an engaging performance for a detailed character. That reservation concerns what Fisher is given to play as much as what he does with it.
The heartfelt playing in Parenthood and the credible child’s perspective in The Witches are enough to suggest ability, without needing to invent the performances he might have given later. Hook adds another established director to the credits, but its ensemble role offers less on which to base a judgement. We would keep the praise specific rather than make grand claims for so brief a career. Start with The Witches, and expect the witches to get the showier parts.
Biography
Jasen Fisher is an American former child actor. Born on 8 May 1980 in Chicago, Illinois, he made his screen debut in the 1989 film Parenthood as Kevin Buckman.
Fisher played the title role of Luke Eveshim in The Witches (1990). He appeared as Ace, one of the Lost Boys, in Hook (1991). These were his only screen credits. He received a Young Artist Award as part of the ensemble cast of Hook, and was nominated for a Young Artist Award for Parenthood and a Saturn Award for The Witches.
Fisher attended William Fremd High School, graduating in 1998.
