"Ethan Hawke"

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Oh man, it is finally good to be here.

Solo, you know,

this is the way I always envisioned the podcast.

And because it initially was called Smart and then when I added Sean and Jason,

I had to add the less.

And that was a, it was a whole thing.

And their whole thing is like, no, less is more.

And I'm like, no, man, less is less.

Anyway, welcome to Smart.

Less.

Smart.

Less.

Smart.

Less.

Smart. Less.
Smart.

Less.

Oh, where'd you go, Sean?

Oh, so I went to go visit Will, and then I went on vacation with you, Jason.

With me?

When?

Yes.

Oh, no, Jason.

My memory's not so good.

Oh, Jay.

Believe me.

Jay, did you switch gummies?

Not related, but did you switch gummies recently?

Yeah, this one says memory suck on it. I got a deal.
Wait, by the way, speaking of memory suck, Sean, I don't know why it's not related, but I texted Jason last night or the night before, I can't remember, Alone, on Discovery, that show about people being stuck out in the woods. Have you seen it, Sean? No, I want to see that.
Jason's been trying to get me to watch it, or both of us, for a year at least. At least.
Oh, yeah, it's Jason. You told me about that.
Yeah, I remember that. Dude.
Is it so good? Yeah. Okay.
Right? I mean, it's kind of cinematic too, right? It gets all dark and creepy and the sounds and the little... What is it, like Naked and Afraid? Naked and Afraid looks like a...
Kind of like Survivor. It's kind of grab-assy and, you know, kind of hijinx-y.
That was me last night, Naked and Afraid. Naked and Afraid, playing a lot of grab-ass.
Well, I locked my keys. I left my keys in the house and i thought everybody was skinny dipping and then but anyway the point is this is people sean they take 10 people put them in the woods and whoever can last the longest with literally like a thing to not even a match god all i would think about is a player which and i know well and there are people hilariously who are like man i'm gonna give this bear a run for its money and then And then the guy doesn't even make it.
They're all professional survivalists, too. Wait, but dude, if they're getting chased by a bear, it's like somebody from the crew step in.
There is no crew. There's no crew.
You've got a bunch of GoPros. They have to film themselves.
You've got a bunch of GoPros you have to set up. You're joking me.
No. I've got to watch this.
It's pretty great. That's incredible.
It's pretty great. I can't wait until you get to the two-man teams, Willie.
Wait a second. You're thinking bears.
I'm not talking about Scotty. I'm not talking about Scotty.
No, no, no. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's not a bunch of dudes. It's not just fuzzy, heavy dudes.
That bear is chasing me. No, they haven't shot it inside Rawhide at 21st and 8th.
Okay, listen. Speaking of 21st and 8th, which takes me to New York, this is a segue beyond all segues.
Guys, can I tell you something? I am really excited because i don't know this person we we have had a passing hello i think a few times over the years uh but he's one of those people that i've always i'm gonna say it i've always absolutely adored his career and what he does is he a bear no he is no no no he's not. He is just talented from the get.
He's been doing it a long time, and he's about all of our age. But he's been doing it, and we've all been admiring him for a really long time.
Not long has he been making movies and then directing movies and then writing movies and writing plays and writing books and then going back and doing this and that. He's been doing it a really long time.
I can tell you respect this guy. Like, you know, Will gets a certain look on his face.
Yeah. There's a certain...
I do. Listen, mystery guest, before I meet you, just know that...
He's not so joking. Will actually is not phoning this one in.
No. You've got something on him.
It's true. He does.
He does. He's impressed.
I've always been like, oh, man, that was so good. And everything he's done, he's really good.
And he's done stuff that's been so different from where he started to where he is today. He's always mixed it up.
And I think that that's the hallmark of somebody who's really curious and really talented, that they keep trying to do different stuff. I mentioned the books and the plays.
And, you know, I mean, this guy, he verged on cannibalism in one of his movies. He stood on top of his desk in another one of his movies.
He was trying to get to space, but he didn't have the right DNA in another one of his movies. He's now got, he's been doing this, he's doing this new series over on, I guess on Disney Plus that's out right now.
He's doing a film on Netflix. He's got, most importantly, a new documentary that he directed that is about Paul Newman, Joy and Woodward.
It's Ethan Hawke. What? No way.
Oh, my God. Ethan Hawke.
Hey, guys. Oh, my God.
Good morning. Wait, Ethan, I just watched The Black Phone.
Is that what it's called? That's what it's called. You got it right.
I just watched it last... I've been telling everybody about it.
You're amazing in that movie. Well, thanks.
Yeah, I love that movie. I want to see it.
I'm glad I got a legit intro from Will. I feel honored.
You got a legit smile out of Sean Hayes. He's usually faking it most of the time.
Smiles come easy to him, but that's genuine. Wow, it's such a pleasure and honor to meet you.
It really is. I mean, Ethan, we've never really met.
I don't know if you remember. We one time ran into each other on the street in the West Village.
You probably don't remember. At Rawhide? Yeah, Rawhide.
At Rawhide. Do you remember? No, you didn't.
Scoring dime bags. No, we were.
I was. Wink, wink.
I think you were with Sherm. I know John Sherman.
Yeah, yeah. I was wearing a shirt.
I was wearing a Brian Jonestown Massacre t-shirt. This is like 15 years ago.
And you just went, I said, sing hi to Sherm. And you went, hey, man, nice t-shirt.
And I was like, thanks. I was so psyched.
And Ethan was in a tube top. A tasteful one.
A tasteful one, yeah. Now, I was just talking with somebody yesterday about that Paul Newman documentary.
I cannot wait to see it. I want to see that.
I just started that. Let's talk about how did this happen for you, Ethan, this doc? Well, it was like right before the pandemic started.
I was getting out of the shower in my apartment, and the phone rang. Sean's got it.
Sean's eyes are closed. He's got it.
Yeah, yeah. Open up your eyes.
Talk slower. Talk slower.
No, I picked up the phone. You know how like now when the phone rings and you don't know the person's name, you should never answer it.
Right. You know, cause it's, well, I just decided what the hell.
I picked it up and it turned out it was Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's youngest child who got my number from a friend.

And she's like introduced herself and said,

I really want you to direct a documentary about my parents.

Nice call.

And basically my first thought was, how the hell do I get out of this?

It just sounded like so much work.

And I talked to her for a while about what she had and why she thought it would be good. And I tried to recommend some other people.
And she was like, no, well, I'm asking you. I was like, well, I was like, let me think about it for a minute.
And I just couldn't figure out a way to say no. When I first arrived in New York, falling in love with acting, they were, I mean, not to be corny, but they had kind of a godlike status.
You would see them sometimes at an opening. And the fact that they both had achieved at such a high level in such different ways, you know, she was kind of like the actor's actor.
She was teaching acting. She was obsessed with theater and ran her own theater company.
And, you know, he was a card-carrying cinema luminary. And they'd been married for 50 years.
So whatever you think it can't be done, the image of Paul and Joanne would be in my brain. Like, wow, you could live a good life and be a decent person and make great art and have love.
So I basically asked the kids if by doing this, was I going to find out anything that was really revolting? Right. You know, like...
You liked your image of them. Exactly.
I love my fantasy version. And I thought, is this remotely accurate? And they're like, yeah, it's remotely accurate.
And anyway, I couldn't figure out a way to say no. So I said yes.
And then almost three years went by. Right.
Wow. You you know what's so crazy that you're on here i always think these this kind of stuff is nuts somebody just texted me like two days ago that i'm in that i'm in that documentary yeah there's like a photo of me or something that they cut to at the theater in connecticut isn't that fine really really bump for that? Some sort of an appearance? Yeah.
Uh-oh. I'm now all of a sudden in legal hell.
Wait till Sean gets lawyered up. Nobody likes to litigate more than Sean Hayes.
Wait, so Ethan, this is amazing. So now here you are, it's 2022, and you've just made, you spent the last three years of your life making a documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
And let's really rewind to young... What.
So now you're what? What's your first acting gig? You're not from New York. You feel like such a quintessential New Yorker to me.
Where are you from? Where'd you grow up? Well, born in Austin, Texas. My parents split up and I traveled.

My dad stayed in Texas, so I'd spend the summers in Texas.

And my mom- How old were you when they split up?

How old were you?

Three.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

We're not going to touch that then.

No, it's like-

You got over fast, probably.

Yeah, no pain at three.

No pain, no pain.

No pain, no pain.

My mother bounced around a lot from Atlanta to Connecticut to Vermont to Brooklyn to New Jersey. So I graduated high school in Jersey.
Just a series of bank robberies or what was she running from? Well, we'd have to ask her. Well, the truth is she was 18 when I was born.
So she was trying to figure out who she was and kept changing jobs and changing her identity, so to speak. I mean, not as a bank robber, not literally her identity.
No, but you can imagine, just saying that, like I'm 52 and I'm still trying to figure out who I am. By the way, all jokes aside.
But you don't play a day over 35, though. You can't get cast as old as hard.
Maybe, maybe, maybe 39. I mean.
Yeah, but that's a stretch. You can't have any kids.
No, it's funny. In your intro, you were talking about, you were saying nice things about me, about curiosity and things like that.
But I feel that way, too. The whole time I was making this documentary, I kept saying to the editor, I'm not a documentary filmmaker.
I don't know what to do i mean i i i didn't know how to do this and i do enjoy doing that putting yourself in a position where you have that beginner's mind sensibility yeah yeah do you feel closer to it now you know what there's only one thing i feel close to which is acting That's the only thing I know anything about. The other, you know, writing, doing other things, it's a similar exercise.
It's just storytelling, right? But I don't, no, I don't feel closer to it. It feels just as mysterious as it did.
You've done some directing though, haven't you? Yeah, a bunch. Yeah.
And you feel a closer pull to acting than directing, yeah?

Well, the great thing about directing is you get to choose your material and you get to hire people.

So everybody that you're working with are people that you like to be around.

When you're an actor, you often get set on these sets where you're like, why is this guy such an asshole?

And why is she?

Who hired her?

You know?

I mean, or you get into a situation where you really like, why is this guy such an asshole? And why is she, who hired her? You know, I mean, or you get into a situation

where you really like the character or something,

but the director envisioned it completely different

and your imaginations are like at war with each other.

And that doesn't happen when you're directing.

Yeah, well, I was just going to say,

but it strikes me, so again, like you get to go and you're directing some and directing a documentary some, all because probably a lot of it because of you've been so good at acting for so long. And, again, this has happened a couple times on the show, but you and Jason are similar in that you guys started young and you've continued and done great stuff.
And they're always used to sort of the dangers of being a child actor and blah, blah, blah. Both of you guys kind of sidestepped a lot of that and stayed true to and have continued.
And everything you do keeps getting better and it's unusual. And that's not even a question, that's more of a statement or an observation.
But what was that moment? Because I wanted to go back before. What was the first thing you auditioned for? I mean, do you remember? Were you saying to your mom, I need to audition for this? Or was she like, there's a part available? Yeah, did you pursue it? Well, all right.
I'll tell you, I'll try to do it fast. Jason, I'm sure you have your story about, you know, child acting is dangerous.
A lot of the people that we came up with are dead, you know? Yeah. I mean, and there's not a bunch of them that have, that are, that are still making a living.
I mean, I don't say that to brag. I'm just, I'm so, I'm so proud of, of us, of, of anyone that can somehow, uh, uh, navigate that, that transition from kid to young adult to what I like, cause it's so fickle and it's, it's not about who's good.
It's just who can kind of stay like kind of semi-cool to hire. I don't mean to sound like a cynic, but, uh, you know, oftentimes it doesn't have anything to do with talent, I think.
Well, it has to do with, I don't think it has to do with talent. It does have to do with a little bit of your DNA, uh, who brought you up, your ability to handle failure, failure, your ability to grow from failure.
You know, I saw, I talked to Martha Plimpton the other day on the phone, and she's just grown up to be such a remarkable human being. But if you don't do the stuff on the inside, your talent dies, you know, or it just gets, it gets beaten up.
My first, my mom, I didn't have a winter sport. My mom didn't get home from work till seven.
So she needed me to do, you know, I needed to be doing something in the winter. So she signed me up for an acting class at the Paul Robeson Center for Performing Arts in Princeton, New Jersey.
And I went to this class and they had a guest speaker come who did like a little improv thing. And I really, I was a giant ham as a kid.
And after class, he came up to me in the parking lot and he said, would you like to be, he was running the McCarter Theater in Princeton. And he said, would you like to be in a play? I was like, sure.
And I was, Dunwoah's, you know, I carried a spear and I was, you know, George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan.
But I did this play and I just couldn't believe

being around all these adults who were having so much fun.

They were sitting there talking about God and love

and sword fighting and, you know, all this.

They were having so much more fun than my parents were.

I mean, they seemed to be,

I loved watching these people in rehearsal. And so after the play was over, I heard through a friend of mine about some open casting calls in New York.
And I just started riding the train into New York with this other kid and going on some of the big casting calls. And one of them was Explorers.
How old were you when you were just let go to go on your own on a train into New York? 13. Wow.
Yeah. That's pretty crazy.
Yeah, a lot of, I should say, a lot of my friends' parents wouldn't let them sleep over at my house because they thought my mother was too lenient. Wait, was she? Was she? Oh, yeah.
I mean, I went to New York. I mean, I went to Europe by myself and rode the Ural when I was 16.
No way. Yeah, she put a high value on independence.
And I think if she had had a different kid, I would have been in drug rehab or dead by 18. But for some reason, it suited me.
I really liked my independence. Well, you were lucky enough to find the thing that brought you joy at such a young age, which I think is key to success.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, unusual.
Not a lot of people get that. Yeah, unusual.
So Explorers is the first, your first film, is that it? First big gig, yeah. Yeah, and who, that was it? With River Phoenix, directed by Joe Dante.
Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, with River Phoenix.
Is Dead Poets the thing that kind of broke you, like, into another category? You mean broke, like, not like killed me, but like, yeah. I meant like broke your, like you broke into the business.
Yeah, definitely. The success of that movie gave me a career.
Yeah, that's amazing. It's such a great film.
So talk about why you're not, you know, a drug addict robbing liquor stores and doing all that stuff, even though you were brought up in, you know, kind of a permissive house, it sounds like, in a good way. You were given rope to, like you were trusted until you gave your mom a reason not to, and you just ended up being okay now can you take some credit yourself that you just kind of came out with a with a with a good head on your shoulders and thank god um for that i just think it's a dance isn't it you know i think a lot of us with the wrong parents could be in a really bad situation um yeah what leaps to my mind when you ask me that is I think about my oldest, Maya.
She's acting. She's on Stranger Things right now.
Oh, cool. Wait, your daughter's on Stranger Things? Yeah.
Which one is she? She plays Robin. Get out of it.
You got to be kidding me. No, man.
I had no idea that was your daughter. She's fantastic.
Sean, he's not kidding you. For fuck's sake, just take it.
Is this an honest interview, Sean? That's so cool. I didn't know that.
Yeah. was your daughter she's fantastic sean he's not kidding you for fuck's sake just take it this is an honest interview that's so cool i didn't know that yeah well so she's she's a remarkable young woman and i did some things right and i did some things wrong and who she is is the person who is able to differentiate right and make sense out of her own life.
And, but did you give life. But did you give her that tool? I mean, the answer probably is no.
I mean, she's just... I kind of think she was born with it.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she's...
You weren't going to stop her. I remember her at four years old being pretty sure that she was going to be an artist.
I mean, it was just the way she related to watercoloring. You'd show her a photograph and she would change the composition of it.
And if you read her a poem and she liked it, she would memorize it. I mean, just anything that touched the arts was a part of her.
And I didn't, did I give her that? I mean, here's an example for you about why it's a dance is we were having a hard time. I hope she doesn't mind me saying this.
And she's in her early adolescence. And I just decided, all right, you know, we need to spend some time together.
And I said, I had a, I had a week off and it was actually kind of funny. I actually wrote on the calendar that a movie was starting like on the 23rd of March.
And I was just wrong. It was starting the 30th.
So I thought I was supposed to leave town. And all of a sudden I was like, geez, I have a whole week with nothing to do.
And I went to her and I said, listen, I know you're having a hard time with me and I'm getting on your nerves and everything. But I think the answer is let's go.
I want to spend a week with you. Like I've got nothing to do for a week.
And I talked to your mom, and I'm going to take you out of school,

and we're just going to go be together for a week.

And I said, I'll take you anywhere you want to go.

Wow.

And I was sure she'd say Paris or something.

You know, I didn't know.

First of all, what was the reaction to,

I'm going to take you out of school, we're going to spend a week together?

I don't think she liked spending a week with me,

but she liked getting out of school.

Yeah.

So it was, but she said she wanted to go see graceland

wow completely shocked me i was like why do you want to go to graceland she's like i don't know

but she'd been watching elvis videos on youtube you know and she just loved him and so i took her

to graceland and we walked into sun studios and she said dad look and she showed me her arm

Thank you. loved him.
And so I took her to Graceland and we walked into Sun Studios and she said, dad, look, and she showed me her arm and all the hair on her arm was standing up, you know, like that thing where you get shivers. And she's like, do you feel it? Do you feel this room? And I remember thinking, I don't know if that's this room or her.
Like, the room is magical,

but you have to have an awareness of why it's magical

for your hair. Like, she understood

what Sun Studios

meant, and she

cared about it and was interested

in it. She understood what Sam Phillips

was up to, and yeah, she understood

a lot of that because I talked about it, but

I talk about the Dallas

Cowboys, too, and she doesn't care about that.

You know, so it's...

I'm sorry. was up to.
And yeah, she understood a lot of that because I talked about it, but I talk about the Dallas Cowboys too, and she doesn't care about that. You know, so it's, you know, these kids are who they are and they're influenced by us.
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promo code SMARTLESS. Hey guys, everybody should have a support system, right? Who's your support system? My support system, as you well know, talk about all the time is Scotty.
And of course my two besties, Will and Jason. Whenever I have a problem, an issue, I talk to them about it.
And if they're not available, I will talk to a therapist and I've been going to therapy for a long time and it's always great. So think about your favorite leaders, mentors, and idols.
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Visit betterhelp.com slash smartless to get 10 off your first month that's betterhelp.com slash smartless and now back to the show i want to go back to when you were starting out because a question jumped in my head about dry spells.

Like, you know, when you're starting out as an actor,

you said you did this play and it goes,

that was kind of amazing and thrilling

being around all those adults.

And then I think in people's minds,

people who are as successful as you,

other people think, oh, it just snowballed

and it was great and I never stopped working.

But there are always dry spells for actors,

especially when you're starting out and you're younger. How do you get through those? Did you doubt yourself? How did you get through that doubt? And were you ever like, God, I can't find a job.
Maybe this isn't working. Maybe I chose the wrong thing.
You know, I say this a lot and people think I'm kidding when I say it, which I guess is a compliment or something, but I've definitely was certain I was washed up at three different times. You know, there were three different chapters of my life where I was like, oh, wow, it's over.
Like, I didn't, I didn't know it was going to end. Because when you, when you have success young, it hijacks your brain in a kind of negative way, which is that you kind of think, oh, the world's on my side.
You know, like, oh, I got this.

I was in Dead Poets Society when I was 18. Like, that's my break.
Now I'm a made man. And then all of a sudden, four years go by and you do six other movies and they're all failures.
And then you want to audition for some happening movie

and nobody even wants to let

you audition because they've heard of you

and they know they don't like you.

There's all these other

24-year-olds that are just graduating college

and now they're finding themselves.

They're coming out of the, you know,

they've just graduated from this drama program

and everybody's really excited about them.

Right? And they're like, no, we don't want that kid from Dead Poets Society. I saw that terrible mystery date.
He's awful. you know, they just graduated from this drama program, and everybody's really excited about them, right?

And they're like, no, we don't want that kid from Dead Poets Society.

I saw that terrible mystery date.

He's awful.

I remember overhearing some film exec,

like I was in the bathroom,

and it was like a president of Paramount or something,

and he was like, you know, America cast its vote for Ethan Haw hawk and he's not a movie star he'll never make it and i remember going oh my it was that after a premiere of some movie i did i was like oh my god and you come rushing out and go what what did they where's the tallies no i i hid inside there yeah of course people talk like the time. They love to write people off.
You know, they're either building you up or tearing you down. You're either in the process of one of them.
And I've had three different times where I really was scared. And because I love it.
I love doing it. And I think the joke is that it's how you handle those moments.
Because we're all constantly being asked to transition. You know, even, you know, now my beard's going gray.
And, you know, I have to transition as an actor. I have to become a different actor.
Right. And if you try to stay the same person you were 10 years ago, you try to stick yourself in formaldehyde because people liked you then, you just die.
You have to change and you have to be willing to let it all go, I think. Yeah, for sure.
You end up being wrong for the part if you stay in the same spot. Yeah, if you stay in the same spot.
And how much, Ethan, did you—so what year was it that you started Malapar, your theater company? That was in the early 90s. Early 90s.
91. And where is that, Ethan? It was the theater company right after, you know, it was a couple years after Dead Poets Society, and I had dropped out of college.
What city is it in? New York City. I took some of the money I made and just rented a theater on 42nd Street.

And I had a lot of brilliant friends, Josh Charles, Robert Sean Leonard, Jonathan Mark Sherman, Steve Zahn, a bunch of different men and women that were young artists. And we just decided to dedicate ourselves to producing young people's work, you know, the work of our own generation.
And we put on these little plays. It was a real sensation.

And I can tell you as an actor who'd moved to New York in 1990 from Toronto and I didn't know a single person, it was very intimidating because you guys had that. I knew some of the people in Naked Angels.
You guys were kind of the answer to Naked Angels. You were like the next generation.
You had all these great guys and doing all this amazing stuff. but I was thinking that must have given you quite a bit of, I was going to say respite, but at least something that you could get to sort of take your mind away from all the politics and the bullshit about being a movie star and actually just focus on doing your thing.
Is there any truth to that? You know, Jason, I wonder what you would say. When we were talking about surviving, surviving being a young actor what actually popped through my head is my friends i had really good friends yeah josh is a good choice for that he's such a good dude hello to josh he's such a but when when you have good friends who say to you you sound really stuck up yeah oh you've been you know you what you've been hanging out with your agent too long.
You sound like you're on an interview. And you have friends that you admire the way that they think about art or the way that they...
I think that your friends can save your life. And if you don't have the right friends, I know like sometimes I just feel so lucky about the friends that I made that they're the ones who kept me alive and kept me thinking.
Amen to that. And also crossing paths with people that are behaving in a way that you recognize as a way that you don't want to be.
That's also really important. Yeah, actually, you know what? I'm glad you said that, Ethan, because Jason, you sound really stuck up.
Oh, well, are we still rolling? Let me go again. No, but, you know, Ethan, I was thinking one of your friends that I knew, I knew a lot of those guys from way back in the day, but one of the guys was Josh Hamilton.
Do you remember when he did that? Because I was living with Missy Yeager, who was my girlfriend at the time when they did This Is Our Youth, yeah, with Kenny and with Ruffalo. Josh was so brilliant in that, man.
He was so fucking good. It just made me think of 42nd Street.
Yeah, exactly. Missy did a play with me at Malapart.
Yes, that's right. Ethan, you know, I always, I ask a bunch of people who come on this show who are in the theater, if you have any great, like, tragic but funny theater stories that happen to you, like, one night.
I have one I don't think I've shared with you guys. One night, just did this play.
It's called Goodnight Oscar in Chicago. Hopefully it's going to New York.
And we're definitely inserting applause there, by the way. Yeah, that'll be it.
And in the middle of the, towards the end of, towards the end of the play, I have to play the piano every night.

It's part of the story.

And in the front row, there's two girls that were bombed, wasted, out of their mind, drunk.

And while I'm playing, it's a really intimate, like, kind of moment in the play.

And these girls, every time I just, like, I would play, like, every every 10 seconds they'd go right on whoa look at that and it was like the rest of the audience was completely silent and the guys would come down they try to get on the stage it was insanity you were doing this play in a theater there in Chicago? Yes, I was. Yes.
They were in the front row, bombed way.

It was so, it was so. I have a lot of good theater stories, man.
I'm trying to, I'll go with the front row. I did a play called Hurley Burley with Josh Hamilton, Bobby Cannavale, Parker Posey.
Oh, Bobby Cannavale. A lot of great people.
But the director had this idea that my character was kind of a drug addict,

a ne'er-do-well type, that I should be on the stage passed out

as the audience enters, right?

So at the 20 minutes, when the doors opened, I would have to be,

and I'd have to be in my underwear.

It was supposed to be, like, hanging off my butt.

And I'm just in my underwear, completely collapsed on a living room couch, right? It's just supposed to be in my underwear. It was supposed to be like hanging off my butt.
And I'm just in my underwear, completely collapsed

on a living room couch, right?

It's just supposed to be bombed.

And people

would come and sit down

and they would see me and it was

like they were looking at their television. They would just

talk about me

like I wasn't there. Because the first

couple rows I could just hear, you know, he's

a really terrible person. I read this article in People Magazine where he said this stupid thing.
He's really a jerk. He's a real misogynist.
And I'm like, and I'm having to listen. And I can't like, I want to lift up my head and say, hey, I'm right here.
Okay, that hurts my feelings. And that's not true.
Exactly. And it would be so painful.
Dude, Ethan, I want to just hijack for one minute, interrupting, which is what I opened up with.

I was just in town here getting a coffee with my middle son and my partner, my girl.

We're getting coffee.

And this woman comes by with her grandson and her son, whatever.

She's standing, I'm going to say, six feet from me.

And she's looking at me, but talking to her son.

She goes, I don't know. I can't really remember his name but that's him and I'm sitting having and I'm stuck on a bench and she's six feet and I just wanted to be like hey you know I'm alive I can hear you I'm breathing right here public property anyway so you're on the by the way who directed that version of Hurley Burley? Scott Elliott.
Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that's so funny. I had another time where my friend died on stage with me.
How about that? Wait, what do you mean? Wow. Like literally die? Like literally, the great Canadian actor Richard Easton, we had a scene in Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia where he had to scream at me, you know, I will not lend you any more money.
He had this huge thing where his final line was, and that's my last word. No way.
And as he said it, his tongue fell out of his mouth the way like a brick would fall out. Like something was so wrong.
What? And then he hit the ground like, you know, I mean. Face first.
Face first. And I was so frozen.
I could, I'm staring. The commitment to the performance.
The audience thought that that was part of the play, right? Because it kind of seemed like my final word. And then he croaks.
And I'm standing there. And I don't know what to do.
I'm looking at the audience and they're all laughing. And I just, my brain just went to the dark side.
I was like, he's dead. He's, that guy, that guy is dead.
My friend Richard is dead. And I don't know what to do.
And Martha Plimpton was in the wings and she came out and she was so ballsy. She came out, she was just like, is there a doctor in the house? Is there a doctor in the house? And then some dude in the third row was like, I'm a doctor.
And the rest of the audience is still laughing. Podiatrist, but I'm here.
No, he was, and then the prop guy came out and they did, what do you call it? CPR. They did CPR on him.
And so he was dead for seven minutes and they revived him on center stage, Lincoln Center. No way.
True story. Big applause.
No, the audience had been evacuated. There was no applause for life.
That's a waste. Yeah.
Wow. I'm glad we were laughing because it has a good outcome.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
He survived and he actually returned to the show about two months later. Wow.
What was it, a heart attack or something? Yeah, he had a full-blown heart attack right there at center stage. Wow.
Hey, Ethan, I've got a question for you. Something that is, I would assume, is unique to young, young actors that become adults.
Something that I didn't battle with or struggle with, but I remember it being a challenge. I wonder if you had the same thing.
When you start training yourself to be convincing as another person, at a time when you're still trying to figure out who you are or who you're going to become, right? As a child, you know, we don't really figure out who we're going to be like till we're what, 16, 17, something, whatever the hell it is. So you're trying on all these different roles and really trying to be believable.
And so that's causing you to really try to find that place inside of you that's kind of like that character. It started to develop for me sort of like a manageable form of schizophrenia, right? Like a monetizable version of schizophrenia.
But it sort of confused my path to identity and who I really was when I wake up in the morning or go to bed at night. Did you ever deal with any of that? Starting as young as I did, training yourself to be somebody other than who you were organically becoming? Absolutely.
I mean, you know, I mean, I had that. I mean, for example, when I was doing Dead Poets Society, my character is extremely shy, right? He's extremely, and so you're accessing the part of yourself that is really shy, right? Like, well, what am I like when I'm really shy? And you start, it's almost like a, oh, it sounds really corny to say, but you know, you hear those Buddhist guys say, just, if you just make yourself smile for half an hour, you actually are in a good mood and it does work.
It's, you can kind of hardwire your brain. Well, you can hardwire your brain for a lot of different things.
And if you're doing a daily meditation on why a human being might hate themselves and not feel like what their words are worth anything, and you're accessing that part of yourself, yes, you know you're more than that. But it's kind of like you're wiring your brain to highlight that part of you.
And I really struggled with that. When that movie was over, and this has been an ongoing theme of my life, of trying, I think actors spend a lot of time inviting, you know, how to get into character, right? You hear people say that all the time.

And so you spend all this energy inviting depression, anger, madness.

It's most confusing with the darker emotions, right?

You invite them in.

But then what are you supposed to do with them once you've invited them into your psyche to play?

Right.

And I found that extremely difficult.

And if you're talented, you have an aptitude for this. Right.
And it's actually an aptitude for insanity. Yeah, right.
You know? For sure. And I think the big lesson for young actors is if you're going to really think about character, you have to start to think about your own character.
Well, you know, it's so interesting you say that because I really am obsessed with The Black Phone. I thought it was such a great movie.
And I'll watch it again. Like, it's one of those movies I'll watch again and again where you actually, I didn't know anything about it.
And as I'm watching the movie, you're playing this crazy, kidnapping, Silence of the Lambs kind of guy. And I didn't think the character would be as dark as it is.
I mean, you actually kill children. Children, yeah.
Like, you kill them. And I was like, how in the world do you find this person? Like, how in the world did you find out how to play that guy? Because it was scary as shit.
Maybe you don't want to know, Sean. Okay, maybe you don't want to know.
Maybe you just asked the wrong question, guy. Yeah, maybe you just fucked with the wrong guy.
You drop your mic and pack your shit, Sean. Start running now.
Where do you live? I want to come over. No, no, no, no, no, no, Sean.
It was really scary. No, you know, I don't really know how to answer that question except that I feel as I get older that acting at its best is a kind of shamanistic process, and that might sound pretentious or whatever, but it is, you're the dude, like, if everybody's sitting around a campfire, you, like, get up and you tell a story and you do a dance and you're kind of inviting these other spirits to be a part of the story in some way.
You are a shaman that is kind of part of the job. And learning to invite different emotions in and letting them flow in and out makes a good storyteller.
You have to know who you are. And I'm lucky.
What I did on that job, for example, is I just, every day I get home from work, I would just go on a walk with my kids. Because the dad gene in me is way more powerful than the actor gene in me.
Yeah. You know, like, and it, I know who I am in relationship to them very well i'm their father that's all that matters and um are we eating are we learning to tell the truth are we taking care of one another all those really simple banal things it's kind of like a grounding wire for me uh but i don't really know how to answer it you know it's's funny? It occurs to me, you touched on it, that your character in Dead Poets Society was very sort of shy.
And then you had said earlier when you first started taking acting part of this theater when you were a kid in Princeton that you were actually quite a ham and whatever. And I've always thought of you, I don't know you again, but I've always thought of you as kind of a shy guy, and I wonder if it's because of that impression.
I just went around to all three of you guys, and I was thinking, like, Sean, the character that you first, like, sort of introduced you to the world was your character on Will and Grace, who was very kind of crazy and all over the place. And Jason, you were kind of a wise-ass.
I knew you from It's Your Move

before we became friends when you did that.

And you were like this wise-ass.

And that's maybe how you're introduced

to the world is that thing.

And a lot of people knew me

just from the first thing they knew me from

was probably Arrested Development

where I played this insane magician

who was over the top.

Illusionist.

Thank you.

And, you know, like that you get kind of

Thank you. magician who was over the top and illusionist thank you and you know like that that you get kind of and i was thinking you get typecast not just for work for life yeah well i always say that you know the thing about being an actor that nobody tells you is it robs you of the ability to make a first impression anymore yeah that's interesting.
You meet people and they have a first impression.

And for some people, I don't,

there was a whole group of people when I was younger that hated me because they hated the guy from Reality Bites.

You know, they think, Troy's a jerk.

I don't like you.

You think you're so cool, you know?

You're like, what, man?

I'm like, dude, I played the character, you guys.

Will you relax? I didn't steal Winona from Ben Stiller like you don't have to be mad at me dude that's funny but Will Ferrell used to do that if you go with Will people would be like Hank Hank and they attack him and you end up being security for Will because people are like we're gonna party and drink and run down the street naked now, right? And he's like, no, man, I've got fucking four kids. Like, what are you doing? Yeah.
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And now back to the show. Hey, Ethan, talk about your relationship with fame and success, I put in quotes, because, you know, in my opinion, you've hit the gold medal with success as far as longevity goes.
Like that, to me, that's the tough thing to do. Like, you know, all you need nowadays is just a sex tape to get your head above the titles and to get a lot of money.
So that's, you know, to get fame and money, it's... Sex tape.
So, yeah. Anything, yeah, just me, just some shots of me.
Sorry. I was just talking to my assistant real quick.
So you strike me as somebody who is completely fulfilled with you, with what you do, the level that you do it. You've never seemed to be a person that has had a thirst for fame, fortune, recognition, celebrity.
You're, you're, it seems that you've always been on a quest to be, uh, an actor that's working and also an actor that's respected. And, and not that that is, you know, a contrived, uh, um, agenda, but it is just a great result of the choices that you make.
Um, something that you give a lot of thought to, or is it just sort of, well, I just kind of get the roles that I get and the perception is what it is. It is not something of my making.
It's not a recipe that I've got my eye on and not something that you're proactive at. Well, our life is how we spend it.
And so I think I could easily say, oh yeah, it's no big deal. But no, I put a lot of thought.
I'll give you an example. When you were saying that, did you guys see the new Elvis movie? No, yeah.
I haven't seen that yet. Well, it's funny because Elvis is interesting to me because you know how when Tarantino makes biopics, he changes the ending? You know, like, well, I'd like to do an Elvis movie that ends right when Sun Studios is exploding and Elvis is breaking.
The colonel signs him up. They leave Sun Studios.
He signs the biggest contract in music history with RCA. And I would make a strong case to be made that he died that day.
You know, that when the object of your life becomes about succeeding versus what you are succeeding about. Because if his goal in life was to make beautiful music, there is no doubt that he should have stayed with Sam Phillips.
He loved African-American music. He loved what Sam Phillips was doing there.
All his success came from singing black music. And he should have stayed there and helped other musicians.
And I mean, it's easy. I'm not, I'm using him as an example, right? I'm not casting judgment on the dead what I'm saying is like I think the path to longevity like this is what I said to Maya is like she wants to be an actor I'm like okay how do you feel if you're 63 and you're teaching acting at prep school in Seattle she's like oh that would be Okay, the second she says that, it's all going to go fine.
Yeah, right. It's all going to go fine.
And you have to, my point about the Elvis thing is if his goal was making music, he made the wrong decision. It doesn't matter what the price tag from RCA was.
You know, he would have been the biggest thing in rock and roll wherever he was. He didn't understand that he had the ball.
He had the talent. Sam Phillips had the talent.
They were going to change music. Music was going to change, right? That was going to happen.
And he could have, he just put the cart before the horse, you know? And so what I try to do with decision-making about parts and things like that is if your focus is on how it develops you as a person, how it develops your art, how it develops your life, then there's things I knew, like, for example, I was making a joke about wanting to say no about the Newman-Woodward documentary, but I knew that that would be good for me, right? I mean, these are people that dedicated their whole life to the same thing I've tried to dedicate mine to. They did it at a much higher level for a lot longer.
And here I am, I was turning 50 when I got that phone call, and it felt like, well, the universe has given me a little challenge. Like, hey, ready? Can you do this? And I knew, I didn't want to do it.
Like I have no desire to be like a documentarian. That's not my goal in life, but the universe is, I'm not in charge of everything.
It's dictating it to me. I knew that meditating on these two people for as long as it took would probably do good things to my life.
And it definitely did. So if I'm hearing you right, it sounds like you've got a very clear idea about what the road looks like that fulfills your, sorry for the term, your soul creatively, spiritually, and you're letting that- Did you just fucking say soul? I apologize.
And that's informing your decisions. And that it would also seem like you would probably and have probably lived your life in such a way where you're not creating things in your life that are at odds with your ability to follow that instinct.
In other words, you don't have some choking overhead number in your life like, oh, my God, you know, my six houses and my, you know, my 17 cars mandate that I... By the way, Ethan, don't fall for it.
Jason's always trying to get to everybody's overhead number. That, you know, that dictates that you have to take that soul crushing starring role in something that just gives you a big paycheck and then consequently probably leads to career suicide.
So you haven't set

yourself up for any of those trappings, even though I'm sure you live a very comfortable life. You're letting your other stuff dictate your career choices.
Yes? Yes. And now we're back to the nature nurture, as you say that.
My mom is an anti-materialist. Like, she is suspect of anyone who spends too much money on an automobile or jewelry or anything, any exterior show of an accumulation of wealth or status, right? She's allergic to it and suspicious of it immediately.
That's the house I was growing up in. So if I had met the colonel, if I was Elvis, I mean, he's a shyster, right? Yeah.
You know? And Elvis didn't have that in his life. I don't know why I'm talking about Elvis so much.
But my point is, yes, I think that, you know, we all want to be able to have a decent roof and pay for our kids' health. You know, we all want that.
But if you're not comfortable with like a middle class aesthetic and you really want 80 million pairs of shoes and stuff you're going to get in trouble if you're not a genius yeah yeah yeah yeah sean hey for every pair hang on i do i do want to say so ethan i'm jason i'm glad you brought that up because it you know if you look at the movies that you've made you've made over the last 30 years a lot of different films and in in a lot of different genres tons of commercial movies as well as yeah tons of commercial yeah tons of commercial but also like you know you made first of all i want to talk about gattaca i love i think a really underappreciated film that is a great and i've seen it probably three or four times i i there i just that, man. What drew you to that? I've always wanted to talk about that movie.
Andrew Nichol wrote, that was one of the best scripts I ever read. I mean, if we haven't even talked about great art, like sci-fi really opened up my life too.
Like when I read Kurt Vonnegut as a kid, Tolkien, Philip K. Dick, you know, these things make your brain challenge society and what society throws at you as truths.
And Gattaca was just a staggering script. And I'm so happy that you said it, because, you know, when that movie came out, it was a failure.
But over the last 20 years, it's found its audience. And I've always thought Andrew Nichol was just one of the best writers I've ever come across.
So good. I saw it in the theater and I've seen it subsequent and all sorts of...
Because you're so immersed in everything that you love to do, the theater, the film, writing. What do you do to escape it if you ever need to? I know you like music, right? You're a big music guy.

Sports, you'll follow sports.

What do you like?

I think one of the secret blessings of my life,

I'm just a huge fan.

You know, I mean, I love music.

I love movies.

The reason I've been able to work

in so many different genres of movies, I think,

is I actually really like them all.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

People can always tell if you're,

oh, you know, if you're cashing in, they smell, they smell it when you can always tell if you're um oh you know if you're cashing

in they smell they they smell it when you don't like what you're doing and right so i've music is my secret great passion listening to records over and over again finding new music i'm not i have no aptitude for that art like i'm not good at it so i can just geek out and be a fan and love what they do.

Did you ever play anything?

Yeah, I played the guitar badly.

Both my oldest two... at it so I can just geek out and be a fan and love what they do.
Do you ever play anything?

Yeah, I play the guitar badly.

Both my oldest two,

Maya and Levon, are both

actual musicians

and they've lapped me so much that it's now

embarrassing to play the guitar in my house

because they play so well.

But no, I love it. Who would you pay top

dollar for a Ticket to Go See concert?

Wow. Besides Elvis.
Besides, well, if I could get Elvis back from the dead that'd be really good um there's so many people you know Ethan Hawke says he wants to get Elvis back from the dead to give him advice on how to deal with the colonel um no um Hamilton Lighthouse is from the he was the lead singer of the Walkman and he he did the score for The Last Movie Stars, the doc I just did, and he's just brilliant. I highly recommend people buy his music.
He's just underrated and incredible. Brilliant.
Brilliant, dude. I feel like we have a lot of similar, Ethan's like a lot more successful slash curious slash like artistically inclined and gifted.
Don't forget handsome. Me.
More handsome than me. He's just got all this, I know, it's amazing.
He's like a way more interesting. Yeah, and he can play even younger.
And I'm like a 10 times more interesting Batman. No, I'm just saying, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, we're not going to get into it.
So, but then you do, here's the other thing I want to talk about. So you do things like Gattaca, and I don't want to belabor this too much, but I love it.
And then you make these Linklater, these movies with Richard Linklater. You guys have this amazing, seemingly amazing relationship with him and with Julie Delpy.
And how many of those films did you guys make? Which you also wrote? yeah which you also wrote I mean that talk about a complete shift from working with Andrew Nick on doing Gattaca to doing these movies and then you do training day with Denzel and Antoine Fuqua I mean this is these are you know you're getting whiplash for with the different here. But seemingly all stuff that you're really into and can do with ease.
Well, it's certainly not easy, but I don't know how to answer, how to speak to that. That writing thing, tell me the writing writing thing is hard don't tell me the writing thing is easy isn't that like just staring at a wall trying to fill a blank page and just you're overwhelmed with all the options available to you and how do you reduce that down and write at the level that that you're writing i think it's really important for young actors to write because it gets um you know that whole thing we were saying about character and about who you are.
And if you're constantly interpreting other people's words, it's extremely valuable to know what your words are. It doesn't need to be for publication.
It doesn't need to be, but just the ability to hear your own voice. And I think, Will, to answer what you were saying, my had this um quote above the toilet when i was growing up which is if you improve in one talent god will give you more and the the other one was to to to master one craft you have to apprentice three i have one over the toilet it says please be neat and wipe the seat but but the the I'm trying to make is that, for me, all these things fed each other.
Like, if you're sitting in a Monte Carlo for four months with Denzel Washington, working with him at a very high level, you don't unsee that, right? And you bring that with you on your next job. So when Linkletter wants me to do this 12-year project where we're going to make a short film about growing up and I'm going to be acting with this young kid over 12 years, I can bring what I've learned from time on set with Denzel.
He creates, he doesn't wait for people to create a creative atmosphere for him to work. He makes it happen, right? Wow.
And once you see that that's possible, it opens up doors, you know, getting

to be in a rehearsal room with Tom Stoppard and getting to see like how he obsesses on every consonant and vowel and the way the whole thing works like a poem and seeing writing at that level, Sam Shepard, getting to be around these people, if you're paying attention, you bring it with you on the next job. And I was really grateful.
Rick invited Julie and I to write those movies with him. And you guys saw Days of Confused, right? I mean, it was so exciting to be working with somebody of our generation who wasn't imitating other people.
He was asking this question, like, what is our

generation? You know, what are we contributing? How can we push the forum forward? And so, yeah,

you're a student of what happened before to understand how they moved their time period,

but not to imitate them, but to be present in your own generation. Dude, I fucking love that so much.
I'm such a big proponent of the same. There's nothing for me, I always talk about it in comedy, but I hate anything that feels too derivative.
I rail against often to these guys about other people who I feel like are kind of, not just, I don't even mean stealing somebody's bit. I mean, just kind of doing their thing.
Stealing their attitude, yeah. Stealing their attitude, and it bums me out on such a profound level, and I often have to be talked off the ledge by these guys for being such a crank about it.
It causes me physical pain when they make money at it. Yeah, same here, man.
Same here. It makes me fucking crazy.
I'm going to send you my list. If you see my, one of the things I'm so proud of Maya about as Robin on Stranger Things is it's proof of this idea that you don't have to try to be original.
If you are yourself, you will be original. Stop imitating everybody else.
She brought herself and what she has to offer to this character. And all of a sudden, I haven't seen that character in film before.
It's a unique person. And when you see a comedian, a musician, anybody bring themselves, then they are original.
It's exciting, yeah. And it's inspiring.
It's so exciting. Oh, man.
I tell you what, Ethan, thank you so much for your... We've taken up so much of your time.
Thank you. Please keep staying original.
Keep staying curious. Yeah, yeah.
Love watching you do what you do, man. It's such an honor to have you here.
You're very, very inspiring. Really inspiring.
I'm so glad to finally speak to you and meet you. I can't believe our paths haven't crossed more significantly till now.
I know. I'm a big fan of you guys, and you're why I did the show.
Okay, yeah. And I love the fact that you guys are, you know, the thing about being the surprise guest is you guys don't have prepared questions.
Normally you do an interview and you can sense exactly what the interviewer wants you to say. Do you remember in 1998, you told Rolling Stone magazine, remember, remember, say that again.
Right, right, right, right. Yeah, no, we're just three dummies trapped in an elevator with you, and we've got you trapped for an hour.

And we also, I think all of us understood when you said, you know,

it's about the friendships, and we're lucky that we get to do this

because we're all friends, and I love these guys,

and we get to spend a lot of time together.

That's a blessing, man.

Ethan, thanks for doing this.

It's great to hear you talk.

Thanks for having me, everybody.

Appreciate it.

Such a pleasure.

Thank you, man.

Appreciate your time. Have a good rest of the day.
All too guys take care see ya so I think he might be top on the list of I want to be friends with him at the end of it I mean I want to be friends with a lot of people that we meet on this show but he might be tip top he just seems so damn great yeah yeah so cool and he you know he's got this new uh docu-series as he talked about the what's the last movie stars on hbo uh yeah the last movie star hbo max i mean uh he's just like of course of course they came to him of course the paul neumann joan woofer's kids came to him because he's just, like you said, he's cool.

You want to hang out with him,

and he's the kind of guy you'd want telling.

Do you want to see that documentary

just because there's a photo of me in it?

Again, he didn't really react to that.

Did you notice that?

It's not the draw.

I don't think Ethan's seen it.

No.

Yeah, I don't think he's seen it.

But he kind of nodded, and I think that he was sort of...

Yeah, I know.

He didn't really...

I think he thought...

I don't think he's positive who you are.

No.

By the way, I don't disagree with you. It's the hat and the glasses.
Yeah. But seriously, his brain, his soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it, seems just so— Is this the second time today you brought up soul? Soul, yeah.
What's happening to you right now? I'm just trying to get myself to a place where I can

say his heart

and everything just seems

so bionic.

Bionic!

Bionic!

I don't think we've used that one.

Bionic!

Smart.

Smart.