The four-time Academy Award nominee takes a rare break to preview his packed 2022.
For the first time in a year,Ethan Hawkeis unemployed.
“The pandemic really made me look at,Why do I work so hard?
Ethan Hawke as The Grabber in ‘The Black Phone’.Universal Pictures
The short answer is, it makes me happy.
I do think there might be something gained by working a little less hard.
Like, checkout these dogs.
Ethan Hawke.Amy Sussman/Invision/AP/Shutterstock
They’re just so relaxed.
I aspire to be more like them.”
Meanwhile, any young actor would aspire to be Hawke.
But his four-decade career was almost over before it ever really started.
At 15, he made his debut opposite River Phoenix in the 1985 box office flopExplorers.
“They invested a lot of money in that movie and they lost it all.
And the phone doesn’t ring anymore.”
It was four years before Hawke next appeared in a film, 1989’sDead Poets Society.
(No wonder she’s now his producing partner.
Well, kind of.
It also marks the beginning of the Ethan Hawke villain era.
Villains might be my future."
At least his near future.
“The uber-rich villain mastermind isn’t interesting to me.
That I find really terrifying.”
Speaking of, with Jamie Lee Curtis already crowned the scream queen, is Hawke eyeing the other throne?
“I doubt I’m going to be the Vincent Price of my generation.
“I’m proud of not being held to one kind of movie.
I’ve learned that there is no doing ‘one for them.’
Like, Paul McCartney doesn’t attempt to write a pop song, he loves popular music.
And so he does it and he does it really well.
Already restless at home, Hawke is dreaming up what’s next.
When it comes to acting, as you’d expect, he’s hoping for a bit of everything.
“I’m dying to work with[Richard] Linklateragain.
If the grim reaper came soon, that’s what I’d want to do most.”
