Oscar Profile #407: Ethan Hawke

Born November 6, 1970 in Austin, Texas, Ethen Hawke has been actor since the age of 13. He is a great-grandnephew of Tennessee Williams on his father’s side. His maternal grandfather, Howard Lemuel Green, served five terms in the Texas Legislature and was a minor-league baseball commissioner.

Hawke made his stage debut in a school production of Saint Joan in 1984 and his film debut in 1985 in The Explorers. His breakthrough role was in 1989’s Dead Poets Society. Meaty roles in Dad, White Fang and A Midnight Clear followed. He made his Broadway debut in 1992 in a revival of The Seagull. Back on screen, he starred in such mid-1990s films as Rich in Love, Alive and Reality Bites. In 1995 he and costar Julie Delpy re-wrote most of director Richard Linklater’s screenplay for Before Sunrise without being given credit. They were, however, given credit for the film’s two sequels, Before Sunset in 2004 and Before Midnight in 2013, both of which would earn the Oscar nominations for all three for their screenplays.

The actor met first wife, Uma Thurman on the set of 1997’s Gattaca. The two were married in 1998 and had two children, actress Maya Hawke, born in 1998 and son Levon born in 2002. They separated in 2003 and filed for divorce in 2004. It became final in 2005.

It was during his first marriage that Hawke starred in modern dress versions of both Dickens’ Great Expectations and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and received an Oscar nomination for 2001’s Training Day.

Hawke won numerous critics’ awards as part of the ensemble cast of Sidney Lumet’s 2007 film, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead which also starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei and Albert Finney. He also received strong notices for Brian Goodwin’s 2008 film, What Doesn’t Kill You co-starring Mark Ruffalo and Donnie Wahlberg.

The actor married for the second time in 2008. His second wife, Ryan Shawhughes was briefly nanny to his and Thurman’s children. Together, they have two daughters, Clementine born in 2008 and Indiana born in 2011.

Hawke’s career kicked into high gear with the mega success of 2013’s Before Midnight and 2014’s Boyhood, both of which were directed by his friend, Richard Linklater. The former, as previously mentioned, was the third in a very successful trilogy and the latter was filmed over the course of an eleven-year period from 2002 to 2013.

The actor’s most critically acclaimed performances in recent years were those in the 2016 (2017 in the U.S.) Canada-Ireland co-production, Maudie opposite Sally Hawkins as a beloved artist and the 2017 (2018 in the U.S.) production of First Reformed.

Ethan Hawke remains one of our busiest and most versatile actors and writers at the age of 47.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

DEAD POETS SOCIETY (1989), directed by Peter Weir

An Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay, this film set in a private boys’ school in the 1950s remains one of the best loved films of all time. The impassioned performances of Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard and Ethan Hawke are extraordinary. They are well supported by the likes of Josh Charles, Dylan Kussman, Norman Lloyd and Kurtwood Smith. Hawke also scored this year as Ted Danson’s son and Jack Lemmon’s grandson in Gary Gordon Goldberg’s family drama, Dad, having beaten all his young co-stars in Dead Poets Society for the part, they all having auditioned for the role.

BEFORE SUNRISE (1995), directed by Richard Linklater

This charmer about a young man and woman who meet on a train in Europe and spent the evening together in Vienna was based on an actual event in Linklater’s life in which he spent a night walking around Philadelphia with a young woman he later lost contact with. He wondered why she never got in touch with him after the film came out. It wasn’t until 2010 that he learned that she died in a traffic accident before the release of the film. Hawke and Julie Delpy rewrote much of the dialogue but were not given screen credit. They were, however, credited on the two sequels for which all three received Oscar nominations.

TRAINING DAY (2001), directed by Antoine Fuqua

Hawke received his first Oscar nomination as the rookie narcotics officer in the Los Angeles Police Department who gets his training from rogue cop Denzel Washington. Although his is the larger role, Hawke’s nomination was in support while Washington’s nomination and win were in lead. Hawke lost the Oscar to Jim Broadbent in Iris having lost the SAG award to Ian McKellen in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. He and Washington would re-team for 2016’s remake of The Magnificent Seven, which was also directed by Antoine Fuqua.

BOYHOOD (2014), directed by Richard Linklater

Filmed over a period of thirteen years, about fourteen minutes each represents a year in the life of the central character, played by Ellar Coltrane, from the age of 7 to 19. Oscar nominated Hawke and Oscar winner Patricia Arquette play his parents. None of the actors were obligated to work more than seven years on the film because of the De Havilland law which limits film contracts to seven years, but they did so anyway. Arquette was forbidden by the director not to undergo any facelifts during the thirteen-year shoot as it wouldn’t be right for the character. Neither she nor any of the other actors did.

FIRST REFORMED (2018), directed by Paul Schrader

Hawke has always been a character actor whether he’s playing a lead or supporting role. This has never been more evident than in two roles over the past two years, first as Sally Hawkins’ miserly, violence prone husband in Maudie, then as the dour minister having a crisis of faith in First Reformed for which he received some of the best notices of his career. The two characters couldn’t be more dissimilar. Inarticulate, but loud in the former and soft-spoken but with a sure command of the language in the latter, this is clearly an actor who may have been around for a while, but whose career is still in the ascendant.