Ethan Hawke is easy to like. He’s like an old friend to Gen Xers thanks to unforgettable performances in Dead Poets Society, Reality Bites, and Before Sunrise. He’s a star, yet somehow feels like the everyman, hard-working, scruffy, possessing a bit of grit with his hands in acting, writing, the theatre, production, and direction.
Hawke’s constant is that he’s a prolific storyteller. There are the auteur-driven works Hawke brought to life with filmmaker Richard Linklater — the Before trilogy, Boyhood, and Blue Moon. His indie-darling side is showcased in Reality Bites, Gattaca, and Juliet, Naked.
In the acclaimed drama category are memorable roles in Dead Poets Society, Training Day, and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Hawke embraced genre filmmaking as well, explored thrillers and horror franchises, delivering haunting performances in Sinister, The Black Phone, and The Purge. Add Westerns to the mix — The Magnificent Seven, The Lowdown — to round out Hawke’s impressive range.
Humble Beginnings
Hawke was born on November 6, 1970 in Austin, Texas, to 18-year-old Leslie and 20-year-old James, who were students at the university. They split up when Ethan was 4. He and his mom moved first to Vermont, then New Jersey. Life with his mom was all about the arts, literature, and social justice. It was his mom who chose his name because she thought it would look good on a book jacket (she was right). She exposed him to music and film from a very young age.
When he spent summers with his dad, he talked football, religion, and “affected a Southern accent,” Hawke shared in The New Yorker. After one visit, Hawke grew concerned that he put on one personality with his mom, and another with his dad — but he learned to honor the different parts of himself. “I became very aware of the ability to shape your personality and do it honestly.”
In an essay he wrote for Texas Monthly, Hawke reveled in the memories of driving around in his dad’s Plymouth Barracuda with Willie Nelson’s “Red Headed Stranger” playing. He was “six feet two, with hair past his shoulders, and he always wore a white cowboy hat and boots,” Hawke said of his dad. He played guitar and piano, and was the epitome of what he felt a man should be.
His Hollywood Start
When he was 13, following a dream and his mom’s influence, Hawke was cast with River Phoenix in the 1985 sci-fi film Explorers. Their characters were bent on building a spaceship to meet up with aliens.
The two struck up a friendship. “He’d never read a book,” Hawke said at the Palm Springs Film Festival when accepting a career achievement trophy. “I gave him Catcher in the Rye. I had never listened to punk rock, and he gave me cassettes. I didn’t know what a vegetarian was. He showed me documentaries about slaughterhouses and the damage they were doing to our environment. He will always be a part of me.”
The movie, Explorers, wasn’t well received and Hawke blamed himself. Phoenix went on to star in Stand by Me; Hawke stopped going to auditions.
Thankfully, Hawke re-discovered his love of acting when he was cast in a high school production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. Hawke is a second cousin of the playwright. “I was aware of the full weight of Tennessee’s play behind me,” he told The New Yorker. “I had the sensation of completely disappearing — as if I was consumed by the wind and became wind. I could feel the whole room breathing in unison …. It was like a drug and that was the first time I’d used,” he shared.
After high school, Hawke went to Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama at his mom’s urging, but Hawke needed to lean into his free-spirited nature. He hitchhiked to New York to see the Grateful Dead and had a professor pull him aside for being high. She questioned his enrollment and it made him realize that college wasn’t for him.
‘Reality Bites’ • Universal Pictures.
A last-ditch acting effort came when Hawke auditioned for Dead Poets Society. He’d decided if he didn’t get a part, he’d become a merchant marine. He scored the role that changed everything — Todd Anderson in the iconic film.
Hawke’s talent began generating a lot of buzz, and he settled in New York. In 1991, he founded Malaparte Theatre Company along with his friend and playwright, Jonathan Marc Sherman.
It was around this time that Hawke met Gwyneth Paltrow. During a sit down for Vanity Fair, Paltrow and Hawke reminisced. “That’s the first time we made out, remember?” Paltrow said. “Truth or dare in my apartment on Prince Street.”
Hawke remembered. “I didn’t want that to happen in that stupid game. I had different plans for that moment, rather than being surrounded by a bunch of drunk knuckleheads.”
Paltrow commended Hawke for never selling out, never compromising. “A lot of us did, for whatever reason,” Paltrow said. “It’s sort of an ugly word, but I always admired how you never did that, and you were so ruled by your artistic integrity. You were brave in your choices.”
Roles in Waterland, Reality Bites, and the Before Sunrise trilogy followed. This also was the time he and Linklater began their momentous partnership. Hawke embodied every role with precision, masterful and yet earnest. It’s seen in his writing as well.
‘Before Sunrise’ • Photo: Castle Rock.
In his second novel, Ash Wednesday, he wrote: “Give your heart to everybody you meet. The rest is pretense.” It stands as a reminder of how much of himself is entwined with his work.
Many of the emotions explored in the novel were based on his own experience — namely, his marriage to Uma Thurman in 1998. The two welcomed their first child, Maya, soon after. Their son, Levon, was born in 2002. In 2004, Hawke and Thurman divorced.
His eldest daughter Maya, of course, played Robin Buckley in Stranger Things. Her rise to fame has made Hawke immensely proud.
Winona Ryder worked with Maya in the retro supernatural series, and she starred with Ethan in Reality Bites decades ago. Hawke’s famous line to Ryder’s character “You and me and five bucks” feels on point for who Hawke was then and now.
In 2016, Ryder said of Hawke in Variety, “He is unparalleled in his vulnerability and intimacy as an actor, and it’s his performance in [Born to Be Blue] that is honestly, truly mind-blowing. I just love him in a very, very deep way ….”
Second Act
In 2008, Hawke married Ryan Shawhughes and very soon after welcomed their first daughter, Clementine.
To The Times, Hawke expressed how much Shawhughes changed his perspective and life. “I say I’m always surprised when people have more kids in their second marriage. When I split up, I was hellbent on not having any more kids and I wanted to be single for the rest of my life. But then I made a best friend and I liked kissing her.”
Shawhughes had briefly been Hawke’s nanny years prior, but their relationship didn’t begin until they reconnected later. She’s also a producer, actor, and Vice President of Hawke’s production company, Under the Influence. They had a second daughter, Indiana, in 2011.
‘Blue Moon’ • Photo: Sabrina Lantos/Sony Pictures Classic.
In His Own Words
During his speech at the Palm Springs event, Hawke said, “All of us here are as good as our time. We make each other. The interconnectivity between all of us is obvious and unimpeachable. The masculine and feminine are inextricable. If we hurt each other, we hurt ourselves, and that’s why we have to take care of ourselves because we are needed. We are needed to take care of each other.”
He went on to share his achievements with the many he’s worked with. “I am the consistent element, yes, but there are so many people sewn into the fabric of it. I never did anything alone,” Hawke said.
With over 80 movies on his resume Hawke is definitively a thinker. He’s graced stage and screen. There’s also Oscar buzz for Hawke’s performance in Blue Moon as lyricist Lorenz Hart, directed by Linklater.
Despite the praise and honors he’s received, Hawke remains humble. It adds to his charm — an aura full of sensitivity, thoughtfulness, and a wild playfulness. Perhaps it’s also his rugged appeal, those gorgeous blue eyes, his sexy crooked teeth.
