Ethan Hawke - Actor Quotes

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I think what I meant, particularly as a young actor, is that you really struggle with the sense of being undeserving of the attention. And you're right. It happens all the time, there's some new young actor who people are gonna put on the cover of magazines and will talk about, and all you did is say 15 lines in a movie. You know, it's not like you started Greenpeace or something. They don't even put the guys who started Greenpeace on the cover of a magazine... So you understand the sense of fraudulence, and it's attached to yourself, you know? And that's what I was struggling with.

Ethan Hawke
Writing the book (The Hottest State) had to do with dropping out of college, and with being an actor. I didn't want my whole life to go by and not do anything but recite lines. I wanted to try making something else. It was definitely the scariest thing I ever did. And a huge learning experience about how not everybody's going to like you, or like what you do. And you have to ask yourself, is it worthwhile? Or am I just doing it to be liked? And it was just one of the best things I ever did. The second book (Ash Wednesday) was so much more fun because of that. The first was just a novelty act, like, 'The kid from Reality Bites wrote a book? Who does he think he is?' And I understand that.

Ethan Hawke
A lot of American actors when they do Shakespeare put on a phoney English accent and it drives me crazy. You're always fighting against the idea that only the British know how to do Shakespeare.

Ethan Hawke
People love actors. They love reading about them and thinking about their lives. But they also secretly hate them. They think their lives are frivolous and all they do is go to parties, and they don't know real problems... There's something at the root of our love-hate relationship with celebrity that I think has the makings, if you could do it in a really substantive way, of a great modern American novel.

Ethan Hawke
One of the most difficult aspects of being an actor is trying to find the right work. Work that speaks to an audience, that you enjoy doing and that is reflective of your artistic sensibility. To be a contemporary movie actor, you have to kill people - that's basically it. If you don't cock'n'load'n'fire a Smith&Wesson at some point in your film career, you're not going to have a film career. There just aren't enough movies that I like to keep me working in movies all the time. Well, let me rephrase that: there aren't enough available parts.

Ethan Hawke