Ethan Hawke had a memorable first visit to Miami on Nov. 2, where he accepted the Miami Film Festival’s Variety Virtuoso Award and sat down with Variety‘s co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh for a discussion about his long and illustrious career. The actor-producer discussed his collaborations with creatives from Richard Linklater to Taylor Swift and a “scary” screen test that he had with Denzel Washington.
A deserving recipient of the award, Hawke has been having a big year. His starring role in Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon” is garnering awards buzz; his return as the Grabber in “The Black Phone 2” made a splash at the box office; he starred in “The Lowdown” on FX; directed a documentary about country singer Merle Haggard; and lent his voice to the narration of Apple TV’s “Vietnam: The War That Changed America.”
Hawke is of a generation of actors who came up in the indie scene of the 1990s. His first movie role was alongside River Phoenix in the 1985 science fiction movie “Explorers.” He then had his first major break playing one of the students in Peter Weir’s 1989 Robin Williams vehicle, “Dead Poets Society.”
The following year, he watched Richard Linklater’s first film, “Slacker,” which he described as “The first movie that I saw that somebody of my generation made.” Being in a theater troupe with Anthony Rapp, Hawke was then able to see an early cut of “Dazed and Confused” where he “felt an injustice in the universe that I was not in this movie.” The two finally met when Linklater came to one of Hawke’s plays, and they instantly hit it off, talking after the show until four in the morning.
Shortly after, Linklater sent Hawke an early draft of the script for “Before Sunrise” and asked him to audition for the leading man. During the audition, he met his would-be costar, French actress Julie Delpy. “She was so intense,” Hawke said, “She had worked with Godard, she’d worked with Kieślowski, she’d worked with Volker Schlöndorff.” The two were casted as the main couple.
Hawke shared a parable of improvising a scene with Deply, where he is supposed to convince her to get off of a train with him, but Deply insisted that her character never would. Hawke said, “For two weeks I tried to come up with ideas that would talk her into getting off the train, and then I came up with this idea that I was telling her that I was a time traveler and that if she doesn’t get off the train, she’s going to spend the rest of her life wondering what would’ve happened if she had, and if she does, she’ll be so much happier knowing that I’m as boring and stupid as all the other men in her life, but at least she won’t have to wonder.” That got the job done and is indicative of the conversational experimentation that gives the film, and many of Linklater’s works, its charm.
“Before Sunrise” premiered at Sundance in 1995. Reflecting on what are considered the festival’s peak years, though, Hawke said, “What’s funny about it now is that in the moment, we were wishing it was 1972. We weren’t aware that anything special was happening.” He laughed that Linklater, Quentin Tarantino and other emergent filmmakers of the time would obsess over their predecessors like Martin Scorsese and Sidney Lumet and say, “If only I could be making a movie in ’68, then it would be amazing.”
He referenced Woody Allen’s 2011 film “Midnight in Paris” to contextualize the power of hindsight and nostalgia. “I know we’re not allowed to mention him, but whatever,” said Hawke, “Woody Allen has this great movie, ‘Midnight in Paris,’ which is all about how everybody keeps wishing they were living 10 years earlier. I think it’s really true that it’s very difficult for us to live in the moment and accept the moment on its own terms and to see what’s valuable.”
Fortunately, the moment has endured for Hawke. He and Linklater continued to collaborate on eight additional films, including this year’s “Blue Moon,” two sequels to “Before Sunrise” released in 2003 and 2013, and “Boyhood,” which they filmed over the course of 18 years and released in 2014. In between, he has worked with a gamut of other esteemed actors and directors.
One of his more memorable roles was in 2001’s “Training Day,” where he played an LAPD cop alongside Denzel Washington. Hawke recalled the intimidating experience of auditioning for the part with Washington, saying “I came into the screen test and he just didn’t say one scripted line in the entire screen test. He was just improvising with me and it was really difficult to try to keep up with him.”
Hawke credits his experience working with Linklater for allowing him to keep his composure throughout the audition. “I was just telling myself, in my head, ‘Why don’t you just pretend Rick’s in the room?’” he said. “I’ll try not to be intimidated and I just made up lines like I would with Rick.” The tactic worked, as Hawke landed the role and earned his first Oscar nomination for “Training Day.”
Other stars that Hawke has had the privilege of sharing the screen and stage with include Robert De Niro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ben Stiller, Julia Stiles and, as of last year, Taylor Swift in her “Fortnight” music video featuring Post Malone.
The actor thanked his daughter, Maya Hawke, for connecting him with Swift. “My daughter is creating opportunities in my life. I got a text from my daughter saying ‘Hey dad, Taylor Swift wants your number.’ So I guess they met. And anyway, Taylor Swift is a ‘Dead Poets Society’ fan, and so, hell, I’ll take what I can get,” he joked.
Hawke reunited with his “Dead Poets Society” co-star Josh Charles in the project, which Swift wrote and directed herself. “That woman is incredible,” Hawke said of Swift. “To watch her empower herself to direct these videos and take it all on the chin and be willing to stand out front, it is not easy.” The actor was also compelled to see Swift on the Eras tour, which he compared to going to see the Beatles at their cultural height. “Not only is she changing the economy of the world, she has people coming together in a room. Here we are tonight, getting out of our houses, being together, dancing, caring about poetry, caring about ideas, caring about expression. And there’s thousands of thousands of people there rocking out. And I was like, ‘Oh, someday people are going to write books about this moment.’” the actor said.
Hawke concluded the conversation by fielding questions from the audience in the Wolfson Auditorium at Miami-Dade College. In response to a final question about what he’s learned when he returns to his previous work, Hawke admitted to being more focused on the future than the past. “I’m so future-centric,” he said. “No sooner do you get something like a prize like this that it crosses your mind, ‘So is this a high watermark? Have I arrived here? Is it good enough?’ It’s cool. I’m happy. But I’m like, ‘What’s next? Can I do something? I like doing this. Can I do it again? Please? Put me in one more game coach.’”
