Mr. Highmore is all of 22 years old, but he’s already portrayed some of America’s best-loved icons, and clearly he’s just getting started.

Freddie Highmore may be young, but he knows how to play with the big boys. And he’s been doing it for years. In a little more than a decade, he’s played young King Arthur, the kid from Spiderwick, the inspiration for Peter Pan, Roald Dahl’s Charlie Bucket and — of course — a teenage Norman Bates. An enormous career for a kid who’s barely old enough to vote…

Go way back to 2001, when he was a wee bit of a lad, but 9 years old. He was the youngest version of King Arthur in The Mists of Avalon. Three years later, at the age of 12 (and looking younger, he was a little boy muckin’ aboot with fairies in the highly derivative Five Children and It, and then months later the big break: Charlie Bucket in the remake of Roald Dahl’s classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In between, he was J.M. Barrie’s inspiration for Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, in Finding Neverland, appearing with Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. Good or bad in general, there’s no question: Freddie was fantastical.

The next year he was hangin’ around with the likes of Luc Besson and Mia Farrow in the half-stop-action fantasy Arthur and the Invisibles. The next year, he was the voice of a pine marten, Lyra Silvertongue’s familiar Pantalaimon in The Golden Compass. In 2008, at the age of sixteen, he starred in the film version of the children’s hit The Spiderwick Chronicles; the next year he was the voice of the legendary Astro Boy in the animated film, and then skipped back to do to sequels to Arthur and the Invisibles. And all this before he was 18.

Then, last year: Bates Motel, where Freddy is playing another icon, Norman Bates, as a young, impressionable and entirely creepy teenager, holding his own and then some with the formidable Vera Farmiga as his mother.

So let’s pause for a moment and add up the score: King Arthur, Charlie Bucket, Peter Pan (in a sense), Pantalaimon, the Spiderwick kid, Astro Boy – friggin’ Astro Boy – and couple-three other fantasy-based characters… and Norman Bates.

Freddie will turn 23 next year.

We hate Freddie Highmore.

No, we don’t. Hell, we’re lucky to have one smart, super-talented young man around to define young fantasy heroes for a generation.

The next season of Bates Motel will appear sometime early in the new year; it’s being filmed right now (we’re waiting for AMC to announce the release dates). Season One is available for rent or sale or on Netflix, and it’s worth watching from beginning to end.

Why do we get the feeling that, for all Freddie Highmore has already done, we’ve barely seen the beginning? Hmm…