How the director Ethan Hawke called a “master of the profession” soured his entire acting career
It’s been almost 40 years since Ethan Hawke made his screen debut, and he’s never been out of work for too long since then. Along the way, he’s worked with many of the finest directors the industry has to offer, which ended up inadvertently souring him on his choice of profession.
Of course, Hawke wasn’t going to dedicate four decades of his life to the job if he didn’t enjoy it, but little did he know that he’d work with a filmmaker so early on in his career that it would impact the way he viewed it from that moment on. Not that it shows, but it must have affected him greatly if he felt compelled to point it out.
The modern version of Hawke tends to stay largely in two lanes; there’s the acclaimed dramatic thespian of Boyhood, The Northman, First Reformed, and Predestination, and the paycheque-sniffing genre guy who pops up in 24 Hours to Live, Getaway, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Moon Knight.
There’s nothing wrong with an actor alternating between character-driven parts and the ones that pay the bills, but Hawke is never going to come into contact with top-tier auteurs if he carries on co-starring with Selena Gomez in forgettable action-orientated fluff.
That being said, the laundry list of talents he has collaborated with includes Richard Linklater, Paul Schrader, Andrew Niccol, Sidney Lumet, and Pedro Almodóvar, so he’s doing just fine in that respect. By his own admission, though, Hawke’s second-ever big screen role ruined him in a way because he knew he’d spent the rest of his days chasing the same type of experience.
“I had done Dead Poets Society when I was 18 with Peter Weir, who was clearly a master of the profession, you know?” he reflected to Roger Ebert. “Peter is a really special person to be around, and when you work for him there’s a sense of purpose and sense of being involved in something higher than yourself, and just a grace to the whole operation that’s very exciting to hear.”
It’s been a loss to cinema that Weir gradually phased himself out of the filmmaking business, with the once-prolific auteur having last helmed a feature in 2010. Hawke was hit particularly hard by his mentor losing interest in something he was so good at, even saying part of the reason he quit was because “Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp broke him”.
When Weir worked with Crowe on Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, the end result was two Academy Award wins from ten nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’. That was a damn sight further than he got with Depp, with the pair developing an adaptation of Shantaram that never even made it in front of cameras.
Survival drama The Way Back marked the end of the line for the six-time Oscar nominee and three-time Golden Globe-nominated maestro responsible for Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli, Witness, and The Truman Show, which clearly stuck in Hawke’s craw if he was happy to point the finger of blame squarely at two notoriously tetchy stars he thinks contributed to his self-imposed retirement.
Hawke would have gladly worked with Weir again, if only for the fact it would have allowed him to recapture the euphoria of their first collaboration. Looking back on what it meant for him as a young actor to be working with one of the greats, he confessed that “it spoiled me because every job that I had after Dead Poets Society was so pathetic and mealy-mouthed and disappointing.”
Slightly offensive to the dozens of directors he’d worked with in the 35 years since, but Hawke has nonetheless continued chasing the dragon Weir provided him with to no avail. It’s supposed to be a net positive to work with an inspirational and influential name so early on, only for Hawke to experience the opposite set of emotions after realising he’d never be able to reach those heights again.
