Ethan Hawke

Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an American actor, author and film director.

Hawke was born on November 6, 1970 to Leslie (née Green), a charity worker, and James Hawke, an insurance actuary.

Hawke's parents were high school sweethearts in Fort Worth, Texas, and married young, when Hawke's mother was 17.

Hawke was born a year later.

Hawke's parents were both students at the University of Texas at Austin at the time of his birth.

They separated and later divorced in 1974, when he was four years old.

After the separation, Hawke was raised by his mother.

The two relocated several times, before settling in New York City, where Hawke attended the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights.

Hawke's mother remarried when he was 10 and the family moved to West Windsor Township, New Jersey.

He made his film debut in Explorers (1985), before making a breakthrough performance in Dead Poets Society (1989).

Hawke obtained his mother's permission to attend his first casting call at the age of 14, and secured his first film role in Joe Dante's Explorers (1985), in which he played an alien-obsessed schoolboy alongside River Phoenix.

The film was favorably reviewed but had poor box office results.

This failure caused Hawke to quit acting for a brief period after the film's release.

Hawke later described the disappointment as difficult to bear at such a young age, adding, "I would never recommend that a kid act."

He later transferred to the Hun School of Princeton, a secondary boarding school, from which he graduated in 1988.

In high school, Hawke aspired to be a writer, but developed an interest in acting.

He made his stage debut at age 13, in a production at The McCarter Theatre of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan. He also performed in West Windsor-Plainsboro High School productions of Meet Me in St. Louis and You Can't Take It with You.

At the Hun School, he took acting classes at the McCarter Theatre, located on the Princeton campus.

After graduation from high school, he studied acting at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, dropping out after he was cast in Dead Poets Society (1989).

He enrolled in New York University's English program for two years, but dropped out to pursue other acting roles.

In 1989, Hawke made his breakthrough appearance in Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society, playing one of the students taught by Robin Williams as a charismatic English teacher.

The Variety reviewer noted "Hawke, as the painfully shy Todd, gives a haunting performance."

The film received considerable acclaim, winning the BAFTA Award for Best Film and an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.

With revenue of $235 million worldwide, it remains Hawke's most commercially successful movie to date.

Hawke later described the opportunities he was offered as a result of the film's success as critical to his decision to continue acting:

"I didn't want to be an actor and I went back to college. But then the [film's] success was so monumental that I was getting offers to be in such interesting movies and be in such interesting places, and it seemed silly to pursue anything else."

While filming Dead Poets Society he auditioned for what would be his next film, 1989's comedy drama Dad, where he played Ted Danson's son and Jack Lemmon's grandson.

Hawke's next film, 1991's White Fang, brought his first leading role.

He made his Broadway debut in 1992 in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 2007 for his performance in Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia.

Other notable roles include in Reality Bites (1994), Gattaca (1997), Great Expectations (1998), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), Maggie's Plan (2015), First Reformed (2017), The Black Phone (2021) and The Northman (2022).

Hawke starred alongside Julie Delpy in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy from 1995 to 2013.

There, Hawke attended the public West Windsor Plainsboro High School (renamed to West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South in 1997).

Hawke received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Training Day (2001) and Boyhood (2014) and two for Best Adapted Screenplay for co-writing Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013).

Hawke directed the narrative films Chelsea Walls (2001), The Hottest State (2006), and Blaze (2018) as well as the documentary Seymour: An Introduction (2014).

In 2010, Hawke directed Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind, for which he received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Director of a Play.

He created, co-wrote and starred as John Brown in the Showtime limited series The Good Lord Bird (2018), and directed the HBO Max documentary series The Last Movie Stars (2022).

He starred in the Marvel television miniseries Moon Knight (2022) as Arthur Harrow.

In addition to his film work, Hawke has appeared in many theater productions.

In 2018, he starred in the Roundabout Theater Company's revival of Sam Shepard's play True West.

He has received numerous nominations including a total of four Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award.