Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an
American
actor,
writer
and
film director. He made his feature
film debut in 1985, opposite
River
Phoenix in the movie
Explorers, before making a supporting
appearance in the 1989 drama
Dead
Poets Society which is considered his breakthrough role.
He then appeared in such films as
White Fang (1991),
A Midnight Clear (1992), and
Alive (1993) before
taking a role in the 1994
Generation X
drama
Reality Bites, for
which he received critical acclaim. In 1995 he starred in the
romantic drama
Before
Sunrise, and later in its sequel
Before Sunset (2004).
In 2001, Hawke was cast in a supporting role in
Training Day (2001), for which he received
a
Screen Actors Guild and
Academy Award nomination in the Best
Supporting Actor category. Other films have included the science
fiction feature
Gattaca (1997), the
title role in
Michael Almereyda's
Hamlet (2000), the
action thriller
Assault on Precinct
13 (2005), and the crime drama
Before the Devil Knows You're
Dead (2007).
Hawke has also appeared in numerous theater productions including
The Seagull,
Henry IV,
Hurlyburly,
The Cherry Orchard,
The Winter's Tale and
The Coast of Utopia, for which he
received a
Tony Award nomination. He made
his directorial debut with the 2002 independent feature
Chelsea Walls. In November
2007, Hawke directed his first play,
Jonathan Marc Sherman's
Things We
Want. Aside from acting, he has written two novels,
The
Hottest State (1996) and
Ash Wednesday (2002).
Between 1998 and 2004 Hawke was married to actress
Uma Thurman.
Early life
Hawke was
born in Austin
, Texas, to
Leslie Carole (née Green) and James "Jim" Steven Hawke, a
high-ranking executive at Conseco.
His maternal grandfather, Howard Lemuel Green, had served five
terms in the
Texas Legislature and
was a minor league baseball commissioner.
Hawke's parents were
students at the University of Texas
at the time of his birth, and separated in
1974.
After the separation, Hawke was raised by his mother.
The two relocated
several times before settling in New York
, where Hawke
attended the Packer
Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights
. Hawke's mother remarried when he was 10 and
the family moved to New
Jersey
, where Hawke attended West
Windsor-Plainsboro High School South
. He later transferred to the Hun School of
Princeton
, a secondary boarding school, from which he
graduated in 1988.
In high school, Hawke aspired to be a writer, but developed an
interest in acting. He made his stage debut at age 13, in a school
production of
George Bernard
Shaw’s
Saint Joan,
and appearances in West Windsor-Plainsboro High School productions
of
Meet Me in St.
Louis and
You
Can't Take It with You followed.
At Hun School he took
acting classes at the McCarter Theatre
on the Princeton campus, and after high school
graduation he studied acting at Carnegie Mellon
University
in Pittsburgh
, eventually dropping out after he was cast in
Dead Poets Society
(1989). He twice enrolled in New York
University
's English program, but dropped out both times to
pursue acting roles.
Career
Early work
Hawke obtained his mother's permission to attend his first
casting call at age 14. He secured his first
film role in 1985's
Explorers, in which he played opposite
River Phoenix as an alien-obsessed
schoolboy who builds a spacecraft with his friends. The film
received favorable reviews but made poor box office revenues, a
failure which Hawke has admitted caused him to quit acting for a
brief period after the film's release. Hawke later described the
disappointment as difficult to bear at such a young age, adding "I
would never recommend that a kid act." His next film appearance was
not until 1989's comedy drama
Dad, where he played the son of
Ted Danson's character.
Then, in 1989, Hawke made his breakthrough appearance, playing shy
student Todd Anderson opposite
Robin
Williams's inspirational English teacher in
Dead Poets Society. The film was
critically well-received; the
Variety reviewer wrote
"Hawke ... gives a haunting performance." With revenue of
$235 million worldwide, the film remains Hawke's most
commercially successful picture to date. Hawke later described the
opportunities he was offered as a result of the film's success as
critical to his decision to continue acting: "I didn't want to be
an actor and I went back to college. But then the [film's] success
was so monumental that I was getting offers to be in such
interesting movies and be in such interesting places, and it seemed
silly to pursue anything else."
Hawke's next film, 1991's
White Fang, part brought his
first leading role.
The film, an adaptation of Jack London's novel of the
same name, featured Hawke as Jack Conroy, a Yukon
gold hunter
who befriends a wolfdog. According to
the
The Oregonian, "Hawke
does a good job as young Jack, being both physically robust but
still boyishly naive. He makes Jack's passion for White Fang real
and keeps it from being ridiculous or overly sentimental." Hawke
then appeared in the war film
A
Midnight Clear (1992) and 1993's
Alive, an adaptation of
Piers Paul Read's 1974 book,
Alive: The Story of the
Andes Survivors.
Critical success
Hawke's next part, in the
Generation X
drama
Reality Bites (1994) as
Troy, a slacker who mocks the ambitions of his girlfriend (played
by
Winona Ryder), received critical
acclaim.
Roger Ebert called Hawke's
performance convincing and noteworthy: "Hawke captures all the
right notes as the boorish Troy."
The New York Times noted, "Mr.
Hawke's subtle and strong performance makes it clear that Troy
feels things too deeply to risk failure and admit he's feeling
anything at all." Nonetheless, the film was a surprise
box office flop.
The following year Hawke again received critical praise, this time
for his performance in
Richard
Linklater's 1995 drama
Before
Sunrise. The film follows a young American (Hawke) and a
young French woman (
Julie Delpy), who
meet on a train and disembark in Vienna, spending the night
exploring the city and getting to know one another. The
San Francisco
Chronicle praised Hawke and Delpy's performances: "[they]
interact so gently and simply that you feel certain that they
helped write the dialogue. Each of them seems to have something
personal at stake in their performances."
Away from acting, Hawke directed the music video for the 1994 song
"
Stay " by singer-songwriter
Lisa Loeb. He also published his first
novel in 1996,
The Hottest State, about a love affair
between a young actor and a singer. Hawke said of the novel,
"Writing the book had to do with dropping out of college, and with
being an actor. I didn't want my whole life to go by and not do
anything but recite lines. I wanted to try making something else.
It was definitely the scariest thing I ever did. And it was just
one of the best things I ever did." The book received mostly
negative reviews.
Entertainment
Weekly said that Hawke "opens himself to rough literary
scrutiny in
The Hottest State. If Hawke is
serious ... he'd do well to work awhile in less exposed
venues, perhaps focusing on shorter stories and submitting them to
little magazines."
In
Andrew Niccol's science fiction
film
Gattaca (1997), "one of the
more interesting scripts" Hawke said he had read in "a number of
years", Hawke played the role of a man who infiltrates a society of
genetically perfect humans by assuming another man's identity in
order to realize his dream of space travel. Although
Gattaca was not a success at the box office it drew
generally favorable reviews from critics, and Hawke's performance
was critically well-received. The
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
reviewer wrote that "Hawke, building on the sympathetic-but-edgy
presence that has served him well since his kid-actor days, is most
impressive".
1998 saw Hawke appearing in Great Expectations, the
contemporary film adaptation of the
Charles Dickens's novel, and collaborating for a second
time with director Richard Linklater in The Newton Boys, based on the true
story of the Newton Gang, a family of
bank robbers from Uvalde, Texas
.
His only movie in 1999 was
Snow Falling on Cedars,
in which he played a reporter named Ishmael Chambers, who after
being wounded in
World War II, comes
home to take over his family newspaper after his father's death.
The film, based on
David Guterson's
novel of the
same title,
received ambivalent reviews and
Entertainment Weekly
concluded, "Hawke scrunches himself into such a dark knot that we
have no idea who Ishmael is or why he acts as he does."
Hawke's next film role was in
Michael
Almereyda's 2000 film
Hamlet, in which he played the
title character. The film transposed
the famous
William Shakespeare
play to contemporary New York City, a
technique Hawke felt made the play more "accessible and vital".
Salon.com wrote: "Hawke certainly isn't
the greatest Hamlet of living memory ... but his performance
reinforces Hamlet's place as Shakespeare's greatest character. And
in that sense, he more than holds his own in the long line of
actors who've played the part." In 2001, Hawke appeared in two more
Linklater movies: the animated
Waking
Life, in which he shared a single scene with former
co-star Julie Delpy contemplating the
afterlife, and the psychological drama
Tape, in which he played a
small-time drug dealer.
Training Day and after
Hawke's next role, and one for which he received substantial
critical acclaim, came in
Training
Day (2001).
Hawke played rookie cop Jake Hoyt, alongside
Denzel Washington, as one of a
pair of narcotics detectives from
the Los Angeles Police
Department spending 24 hours in the gang neighborhoods of
South Los
Angeles
. The film was a box office hit, taking
$104 million worldwide, and garnered generally favorable
reviews.
Variety wrote that Hawke's part "shows signs of
coming to new life as a screen actor after somnolent turns in the
likes of
Snow Falling on Cedars. Hawke adds feisty and
cunning flourishes to his part that allow him to respectably hold
his own under formidable circumstances."
Paul Clinton of
CNN reported
that Hawke's performance was "totally believable as a doe-eyed
rookie going toe-to-toe with a legend [Washington]". Hawke himself
described
Training Day as "the best movie I've made in a
long time". His performance earned him
Screen Actors Guild and
Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting
Actor.
Hawke at the 2007 Toronto
International Film Festival
Hawke pursued a number of projects away from cinema throughout the
early 2000s.
He made his directorial feature debut with
Chelsea Walls (2002), an
independent drama about five struggling artists living in the famed
Chelsea
Hotel
in New York City. Upon its release, the
feature received mixed reviews; The
Los Angeles Times wrote that Hawke's
directorial debut "has brought Nicolette Burdette's play to the
screen with fluid grace and a perfect blend of dreaminess and
grit", while
The Boston
Globe cited that his direction is not apparent in
Chelsea Walls. The film was critically and financially
unsuccessful. A second novel, 2002's
Ash Wednesday, was
better received. The tale of an
AWOL
soldier and his pregnant girlfriend, between whose perspectives the
novel alternates, the novel attracted critical praise:
The Guardian called it "sharply and
poignantly written ... makes for an intense one-sitting read".
PopMatters praised Hawke’s writing style,
particularly the deft movements of his prose from serious to comic,
and the "dead-on" dialogue. In 2003 Hawke made a television
appearance, guest starring in the
second season of the television
series
Alias, where he
portrayed a mysterious
Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) agent.
In 2004 Hawke returned to film, starring in two features,
Taking Lives and
Before Sunset. In
Taking
Lives, a thriller based on Michael Pye's novel of the
same name, he portrays a man who can identify a
serial killer who has been assuming the identity of his victims.
Director
D. J. Caruso's
decision to cast Hawke was based on the "vulnerability" he
displayed in
Training Day and believed he could do the
same with his character. Upon release,
Taking Lives
received broadly negative reviews. Despite the film's reception,
Hawke's performance was favored by critics; the
Star Tribune noted that Hawke "plays a
complex character persuasively".
Before Sunset, the
Linklater-directed sequel to
Before Sunrise which Hawke
co-wrote with Linklater and Delpy, was more successful, with a
contributor of
The Hartford
Courant reporting that the three collaborators keep Hawke
and Delpy's characters "iridescent and fresh", concluding that they
are the most delightful and moving of all romantic movie couples.
Before Sunset garnered an
Academy Award for
Best Adapted Screenplay, Hawke's first screenwriting Oscar
nomination.
Hawke at the 2008 Toronto
International Film Festival
2005 saw Hawke star in the action thriller
Assault on Precinct
13, a loose remake of
John
Carpenter's 1976 film of the
same title, with an
updated plot. Hawke played Sergeant Jake Roenick, a Detroit
policeman working desk duty in a rundown police station.
Assault on Precinct 13 received reasonable reviews; some
critics praised the dark swift feel of the film, while others
compared it unfavorably to John Carpenter's original.
Hawke also starred
that year in the political crime thriller Lord of War, playing an Interpol
agent chasing an arms dealer played by Nicholas Cage.
In 2006 Hawke was cast in a supporting role in the film
Fast Food Nation,
an adaptation by Linklater and
Eric
Schlosser of Schlosser's bestselling 2001 non-fiction book
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of
the All-American Meal. Hawke directed his second feature,
The Hottest State, based
on his eponymous 1996 novel. The movie was screened at a special
presentation at the
2006 Venice
International Film Festival and was released in theaters in
2007.
Hawke appeared alongside
Phillip
Seymour Hoffman,
Marisa Tomei, and
Albert Finney in
Sidney Lumet's crime drama
Before the Devil Knows You're
Dead (2007). Hawke played an ex-husband in desperate need
of child support who decides to rob his parent's jewelry store with
his desperate brother (Hoffman), with disastrous consequences.
Peter Travers of
Rolling Stone praised Hawke's
performance, noting that he "digs deep to create a haunting
portrayal of loss".
USA Today
called the movie "highly entertaining", describing Hawke and
Hoffman's performances as excellent.
In 2008 Hawke starred in the crime drama
What Doesn't Kill You, alongside
Mark Ruffalo, and in
Brooklyn's Finest (2009), in a
leading role opposite
Richard Gere and
Don Cheadle, portraying a narcotics
officer who uses his position to steal drug money and vigilante
justice. Hawke also appeared in
New York, I Love You, a romance
movie comprising 12 short films. His most recent work, as a vampire
researcher who tries to save humanity from extinction in
Daybreakers, is scheduled for
release January 2010. Aside from film, Hawke will star as
Starbuck, the first officer of the
Pequod whaleship, in a
television adaptation of
Herman
Melville's 1851 novel
Moby-Dick.
Stage career
Hawke
made his Broadway
debut in 1992, portraying the playwright Konstantin
Treplev in Anton Chekhov's
The Seagull at the Lyceum Theater in Manhattan
. The following year Hawke was a co-founder
and the artistic director of
Malaparte, a Manhattan theater
company, which survived until 2000.
Hawke returned to theater in a November 2003 production of
Henry IV, playing
Henry Percy, also called Harry
Hotspur.
New York
magazine wrote: "Ethan Hawke’s Hotspur ... is a compelling,
ardent creation."
Ben Brantley of the
New York Times reported that Hawke's interpretation of
Hotspur was "too contemporary for some tastes. It's hard to credit
him as the embodiment of an older order of chivalry", but allowed
"[He's] great fun to watch as he fumes and fulminates." In April
2005 Hawke starred in the off-Broadway revival of
David Rabe's dark comedy
Hurlyburly.
New York Times
contributor Ben Brantley praised Hawke's performance as the central
character Eddie, reporting that "he captures with merciless
precision the sense of a sharp mind turning flaccid".
In
November 2006 Hawke starred as Mikhail
Bakunin in Tom Stoppard's
The Coast of Utopia, a
nine-hour long production, at the Lincoln Center
in New York. Reviewing the production the
Los Angeles Times
complimented Hawke's take on Bakunin, writing: "Ethan Hawke buzzes
in and out as Bakunin, a strangely appealing enthusiast on his way
to becoming a famous anarchist." The performance earned Hawke his
first
Tony Award nomination for
Best
Featured Actor in a Play. In November 2007 he directed
Things We Want, a two-act play by
Jonathan Marc Sherman, for the
artist-driven
Off-Broadway company
The New Group. The play concerns four
characters, three of whom are alcoholics. The production starred
Paul Dano,
Peter
Dinklage,
Josh Hamilton,
and
Zoe Kazan. The
Variety
reviewer wrote: "Ethan Hawke uses the space confidently, he allows
his talented cast to push mannered material further into
self-consciousness."
New York magazine praised Hawke's
understated direction, particularly his handling of a "gifted"
cast.
The following year Hawke received the Michael Mendelson Award for
Outstanding Commitment to the Theater. In his acceptance speech
Hawke said "I don't know why they're honoring me. I think the real
reason they are honoring me is to help raise money for the theater
company. Whenever the economy gets hit hard, one of the first thing
to go is people's giving, and last on that list of things people
give to is the arts because they feel it's not essential. I guess
I'm here to remind people that the arts are essential to our mental
health as a country."
In 2009 Hawke appeared in two plays under British director
Sam Mendes: as Trofimov in Chekhov's
The Cherry Orchard, and as Autolycus
in Shakespeare's
The Winter's
Tale.
The two productions, launched in New York as
part of The Bridge Project produced by the Brooklyn
Academy of Music
and the Old
Vic
, went on a transatlantic tour in six countries from
January to August. The Cherry Orchard won a mixed
review from the
New York Daily
News, which wrote "Ethan Hawke ... fits the image of
the 'mangy' student Trofimov, but one wishes he didn't speak with a
perennial frog in his throat." Hawke's performance in
The
Winter's Tale earned him a
Drama
Desk Awards nomination for
Outstanding
Featured Actor in a Play.
Personal life
.jpg/185px-Ethan_Hawke_Festival_de_Venise_(Mostra).jpg)
Hawke with wife Ryan Shawhughes at the
2009 Venice International Film Festival
On May 1, 1998, Hawke married actress
Uma
Thurman, whom he met on the set of
Gattaca (1997). The
couple have two children, daughter Maya Ray Thurman-Hawke (born
July 8, 1998) and son Levon Roan Thurman-Hawke (born January 15,
2002). The pair separated in 2003, amid allegations of infidelity
on Hawke's part, and filed for divorce the following year. Hawke
married for a second time in June 2008, wedding Ryan Shawhughes,
the former nanny to his and Thurman's children. The wedding came a
few weeks before the birth of Hawke and Shawhughes's daughter,
Clementine Jane Hawke, on July 18, 2008.
Hawke
lives in Chelsea
, a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in
New York
City
, and owns a small island in Tracadie, Nova Scotia
. Hawke is a relative of
Tennessee Williams on his father's side:
Cornelius Williams, father of Tennessee Williams, was Hawke's
great-great-uncle. He supports the
United States Democratic
Party and supported
Bill Bradley,
John Kerry and
Barack Obama for
President of the United
States in
2000,
2004 and
2008,
respectively.
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