Ethan Hawke: Success Is as Simple as Setting Achievable Goals
As an actor, director, screenwriter, and novelist, Ethan Hawke knows how to get things done. The secret to his success is taking small, progressive steps to a larger goal. It's just that simple.
Although Ethan Hawke is a novelist, he says writing a novel has never been a personal goal. His comment is not a falsely modest one. Rather it comes from a feeling of genuine intimidation before the task of writing a book-length manuscript. As a famous poet once said, our ends never know our beginnings, and in the case of achieving our goals, this might be a good thing.
Ethan Hawke on "Boyhood," Chet Baker, and What Makes a Good Artist
Actor, writer, and director Ethan Hawke discusses what qualities make a good artist, and why it's important to be accept ridicule for taking risk on the path toward artistic success.
Ethan Hawke, award-winning actor and director with titles that include the ever talked about Boyhood, discusses the extent to which appearance matters when playing a role — changing accent, changing hairdo, etc. — and how much it doesn't. For him, understanding character acting and breaking the wall of what the audience expects means coming to something more essential about a character, an essential truth beyond cosmetic changes.
Ethan Hawke on Donald Trump, Having Integrity, and Johnny Cash
Free speech is paramount, but how you use your speech defines you as a person. When our politicians stop demanding the moral high ground, we are in a very dangerous place, says Hawke.
Free speech is paramount, but how you use your speech defines you as a person. When our politicians stop demanding the moral high ground, we are in a very dangerous place, says Hawke.
Ethan Hawke is an American actor, novelist, screenwriter, and director. Hawke received Academy Award and Screen Actors Guild Supporting Actor nominations for his work in Antoine Fuqua's "Training Day," opposite Denzel Washington. Hawke most recently appeared in Robert Budreau's “Born to Be Blue," for which he received rave reviews out of the Toronto Film Festival for his depiction of legendary jazz trumpeter Chet Baker.
In 1996, Hawke wrote his first novel, The Hottest State, published by Little Brown and now in its nineteenth printing. In 2002, his second novel, Ash Wednesday, was published by Knopf and was chosen for Bloomsbury's contemporary classics series. Additionally, Hawke's 2016 graphic novel, "Indeh," with illustrator Greg Ruth, captures the narrative of two nations at war who strive to find peace and forgiveness in a time of great upheaval.
At the age of twenty-one, Hawke founded the Malaparte Theater Co., which remained open for more than five years giving young artists a home to develop their craft. The next year, in 1992, Hawke made his Broadway debut in "The Seagull." Additionally, he has appeared in "Henry IV" alongside Richard Easton on Broadway; "Buried Child" (Steppenwolf); "Hurlyburly," for which he earned a Lucille Lortel Award Nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor and Drama League Award Nomination for Distinguished Performance (The New Group); Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia," for which he was honored with a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play and Drama League Award nomination for Distinguished Performance (Lincoln Center); the inaugural season of The Bridge Project's double billings of "The Cherry Orchard" and "A Winter's Tale," which garnered Hawke a Drama Desk Award Nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play (Brooklyn Academy of Music and The Old Vic); and "Blood From A Stone" (The New Group) which earned him a 2011 Obie Award for Performance. In 2010, Hawke directed Sam Shepard's "A Lie of the Mind," for which he received a Drama Desk Nomination for Outstanding Director of a Play as well as recognition in the New York Times and The New Yorker top ten lists of the leading theatre productions in 2010.
