The one role Ethan Hawke instantly knew he had to play: “I felt it in my bones”
Ethan Hawke has taken on many great roles in his career, from the shy student Todd in Dead Poets Society to the charismatic Jesse in Richard Linklater’s time-spanning romantic trilogy Before Sunrise.
Moving between emotional dramas and horror movies, Hawke is an unpredictable star, but every so often, he turns in a particularly astounding performance that makes you wonder why he doesn’t have an Oscar yet.
He has been nominated for three acting Oscars and two for writing (he contributed to the Before series), but he has yet to walk away from an Academy Award ceremony with a golden statuette in hand. While that could change this year following his nomination for Blue Moon, there’s a certain performance of his that many fans believe he should’ve won an Oscar for – but he wasn’t even nominated.
In 2017, he was cast in the lead role of First Reformed, written and directed by Paul Schrader, playing Reverend Ernst Toller, who experiences a crisis of the self as he grapples with the grief from the loss of his son, his deteriorating marriage, and growing environmental concern.
It had been a while since Schrader had directed a film that had performed particularly well, but he seemed back on form here, even earning an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Original Screenplay’. When Hawke was presented with the script, he knew instantly that he had to take on this role – there was nothing that could stop him.
When something feels right, especially artistically, you have to fully lean into it, and it only took a few pages of the script for Hawke to realise that First Reformed was going to be a big project for him. “I had to play it. By page three, I thought I had to play this part. I was really moved by it,” he told Newsweek.
It’s actually pretty crazy that Hawke wasn’t nominated for the ‘Best Actor’ Oscar, although he did win various other accolades for his performance, including an Independent Spirit Award. While Hawke has famously given many charming performances – watching the Before series makes you feel like you’re actually walking and talking alongside him – here, he shapeshifts into something much more intense, and it’s compelling.
It was a new step for Hawke, but it was the ultimate proof that he has what it takes to play against type, to tap into darker sides of himself, and to really take feelings of inner turmoil and courageously bring them to the big screen, and he felt so drawn to the role, even though it was like nothing he had ever done before, with him explaining, “For me, in the world we’re living in right now, it was like a cry. The cry of an old lion. I felt it in my bones. To intellectualise it, I lose it. I just felt it.”
Getting the chance to work with Schrader on a script that he felt actually came close to the heights of Taxi Driver, which he wrote decades before, was enough to sell the film to Hawke. “It’s so clearly the same voice that wrote Taxi Driver. If you hadn’t read a [JD] Salinger book in 20 years and then you did, you’d immediately know it was Salinger.”
