How The Beatles inspired Ethan Hawke’s career: “They just had different interests”
For the most part, Ethan Hawke has always stayed true to himself and not been chewed up and spat out by the Hollywood machine.
He’s been acting for almost four decades, but he’s never quite become a bonafide Hollywood movie star. That’s partly by design, with the four-time Academy Award nominee preferring to ply his trade in smaller, more filmmaker-driven projects instead of chasing the money, although he has been known to take the odd paycheque gig here and there.
Hawke has always been honest about it, though: the one time he tried to sell out by starring opposite Angelina Jolie in Taking Lives, the results were dire. He’s developed a habit of popping up in genre fluff like 24 Hours to Live, The Purge, and Marvel’s Moon Knight, but everyone has bills to pay.
While most actors will cite industry legends as their main inspiration, Hawke instead looked at The Beatles and how such a monumental collective spawned many disparate paths following their split. He doesn’t have to be an indie actor or a blockbuster leading man, because he knows there’s a way he can do both.
During an interview with The Talks, Hawke explained that his goal is to “tell the truth and try to make something beautiful”. It’s easier said than done, especially in the modern era when box office and social media followers are often treated as more important than storytelling.
When Hawke worries about losing his integrity as an actor, he thinks about Paul McCartney. People may criticise the musician for selling out because he writes popular music, but Hawke believes he’s “as true to himself as John Lennon was true to himself. They just had different interests”.
To put it into acting parlance, McCartney is the A-lister who headlines hit movies, and Lennon is the actor who had the world at their feet and decided to focus on art above commerce. Together, the Beatles were as successful as it gets, but as individuals, they all had a unique skill set that allowed them to try their hand at almost anything. It’s not that Hawke doesn’t respect the actors who can make good blockbusters, something he considers a “skill”, it’s just that he doesn’t think he’s one of them.
“I worked with Denzel Washington, and he understands how to make a good Hollywood movie,” he explained. “He understands what the audience is thinking and wanting and knows how to do that without being crass.”
In his experience, making big-budget films is often a scary experience, and not one he’d build his career on: “They’re just worried you’re gonna lose money, or your idea is going to derail the system.”
He definitely doesn’t want to be known as Hollywood’s version of George Harrison or Ringo Starr, but if he can find the middle ground between Lennon and McCartney and continue alternating between his Richard Linklater collaborations and gun-toting remakes of The Magnificent Seven, then Hawke will be happy.
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