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After getting an Oscar nomination for his role as famed Broadway composer Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon, Ethan Hawke couldnt help but reminisce on his long-lasting friendship with the films director, Richard Linklater. I have to express my gratitude to Linklater because my first acting award I ever won was a bong from High Times magazine for my performance in Tape as the best stoned performance of the year. And, Rick just keeps giving me these things, so Im incredibly grateful, Hawke says.
In the indie film, Hawke transforms himself into the diminutive composer, who regales attendees at Sardis bar with anecdotes about his career highs in the theater and bemoans the loss of his former partnership with Richard Rodgers. Set during the opening-night party for Oklahoma!, the film almost always trains the camera on Hawke as he vacillates between charm and pleas for continued relevance in the theater world. blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-article-mid-article-uid0' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["mid-article1","mid-articleX","mid","mid-article"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("ros\/mid-article") .addSize([[300,250],[2,2],[300,251],[620,350],[2,4],[4,2],[320,480],[620,366]]) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; }); Related Stories Movies Visual Effects Society Awards: 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' Leads With 7 Wins Movies Park Chan-wook Is the 2026 Cannes Jury President
Hawke, who calls the role one of the hardest hes taken on in his long career, speaks about becoming Hart and why the physical transformation was akin to skiing down a hill that makes you think, Holy shit, Im going to die.
What keeps drawing you back to working with Richard Linklater?
Oh, thats totally uncomplicated. Its just friendship. We met in 93, I think, and we just started talking and talking. Weve been talking for 30 years, and every now and then these movies grow out of that friendship.
He pitched this movie to you more than a decade ago and waited for you to age into the role. But was there more that happened over that decades-plus process? blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-dsk-tab-mid-article2-uid1' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["mid","mid-article2","mid-articleX"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("ros\/mid-article2") .addSize([[300,250],[300,251],[620,350],[2,4],[4,2],[320,480],[620,366]]) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; });
I think his intuition was that we werent ready to make it. And I dont know if he could have articulated exactly why. Part of it had to do with me getting older. Part of what happened in the last decade is that Ive gotten more and more interested in what people call character acting, and Ive gotten better at it, and so the time wasnt wasted. We also knew what a razors edge the film walks. A movie set in real time, in one party. Its a very difficult filmmaking accomplishment, and it needed a lot of meditation about how to pull something like that off.
What made you become more interested in character acting?
Its just lifes relationship to this profession. Id probably say my friendship with [Philip Seymour] Hoffman had a lot to do with it, but a lot of it was continuing to try to grow. Youve got to figure out, Well, all right, what if I did something totally different? and you start pushing the boundaries of the box.
You worked on this character during a series of workshops over several years. What did you learn through that process?
It really all comes back to my friendship with Linklater. We would just read it and work on it. We would talk about Larry, about the people we know that were like this, or what the film is about, and what do we think hes thinking about that? Then wed send each other records and be like, Thats an interesting line, where does that line come from? And we started kind of seeing the movie as a Rodgers and Hart song, like, What if we made a movie that was a 90-minute Rodgers and Hart song? In a lot of ways, Ricks job was to create the architecture and skeleton and musculature the way that Richard Rodgers would for the song, and my job was the lyrics to sit on top of it and dance and play. Because whats so powerful about their music is that it has all the strength and gravitas and, at the same time, its completely silly. And when you can be silly and strike a note thats profound, its a magic trick. blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-thr-article-mid-articleX-uid2' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["btf","mid-articleX","mid"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("ros\/mid-articleX") .addSize([[300,250],[300,251],[620,350],[320,480],[620,366]]) .setLazyLoadMultiplier(2) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; });
Youve called this the hardest role youve ever done. Why is that?
There have been a handful that have been extremely challenging. Its just one of the few jobs thats used everything Ive learned over the years, from the physical stuff, to the vocal work, to the movement work, to the verbiage, to the text, to the ideas that were trying to communicate. It was not a light lift.
When you become a professional actor, theres a great push to just always stay in the same box. You stop letting yourself play as much, and the play is where really good things happen. So in that way, I love that Rick was giving me a chance to really jump out of the normal sandbox … so I could really find a voice that matched his wit and his energy and his soul, for lack of a better word, and making all that language feel like it was my own.
You also had a big physical transformation to become Lorenz Hart, including shaving your head, wearing a comb-over and adjusting your posture to help appear about a foot shorter. How did it feel taking that on?
If youve ever skied, and you ski down a slope thats way too difficult, while youre doing it, youre absolutely miserable. And when its over, youre like, Wow, that was fun. Once you survive, youre like, That was pretty interesting. I love that. But while youre doing it, its like, Holy shit, Im going to die. blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-thr-article-mid-articleX-uid3' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["btf","mid-articleX","mid"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("ros\/mid-articleX") .addSize([[300,250],[300,251],[620,350],[320,480],[620,366]]) .setLazyLoadMultiplier(2) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; });
Youre a big theater person. Is that what drew you to this story?
Absolutely. The legend of Broadway looms large in my psyche. So any time you get to touch those myths — and even some of the final shots of all the portraits of the artists on the Sardis wall — its like the way the baseball player feels about the Hall of Fame. You want to know what they were thinking, and what they were doing, and how did they do that? How did they feel about it? Trying to make all that come alive for the audience is a game I find thrilling.
You have been doing a lot of campaigning for this movie. Do you now see this as the end of the campaign trail or is there more to come?
Ask me in a couple of months. It was amazing to get the nomination, and it was even sweeter that [writer] Robert Kaplow was nominated because that makes me feel like people really saw the movie. Because if you see the movie, its one of the most staggering pieces of writing Rick and Ive ever come across in 30 years of working, and its just an absolutely brilliant screenplay. I really feel my job is like an ambassador of independent film. I want movies like this to get made. I want there to be a future in my life and other peoples lives for movies like this to exist, so people have choices in what theyre seeing.
This has been a big year for you with the Oscar nomination, and you had the film Black Phone 2, you had the TV show The Lowdown. You had the film The Weight at Sundance as well.
The truth is, I work hard all the time, and sometimes people notice, sometimes they dont. I really enjoy what I do. It’s been a whirlwind, but Ive been doing it with friends. My relationship with [The Lowdown’s] Sterlin Harjo is really exciting to me. I love that show. It feels like an incredibly unique year to have this new friend in Sterlin, making this piece thats really important to me, and maintaining my relationship with Linklater and getting to do something that weve been working on a long time. Then my relationship with [Black Phone 2’s] Scott Derrickson, this is our third film together this year. So nothing feels different to me. These are all old relationships that have come to bear, and that feels really exciting. But, the way my brain works is Im really just thinking about whats next. blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-thr-article-mid-articleX-uid4' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["btf","mid-articleX","mid"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("ros\/mid-articleX") .addSize([[300,250],[300,251],[620,350],[320,480],[620,366]]) .setLazyLoadMultiplier(2) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; });
I saw that you called that next project with Linklater “the greatest film ever made.”
I say that every time I go to work. Im like one of those athletes who guarantees victory all the time. And you know, sometimes Im right. Its a movie that we hope to make this year. Its something weve been working on a long time. I couldnt be more excited about it, as shown by my gross displays of arrogance.
