Interview

‘It felt dangerous. You got naggy’: Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on power, combovers and Blue Moon

Ahead of their 11th movie together, the actor and director discuss musicals, the legacy of Philip Seymour Hoffman and what being bald and 5ft tall does to your flirting skills

 

Ethan Hawke

Review

Blue Moon review – Ethan Hawke is terrific in Richard Linklater’s bitter Broadway breakup drama 

This article is more than 1 month old

Hawke plays with campy brilliance and criminal combover the lyricist Lorenz Hart as he spirals into vinegary jilted despair after his split from Richard Rodgers

Peter Bradshaw

Thursday 16 October 2025

Breaking up with the more prominent partner in a showbiz double act is a hazardous business. Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now this witty and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in size – but is also occasionally filmed standing in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at taller characters, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, 50 years of love and artistic commitment

A new documentary series called ‘The Last Movie Stars,’ which was presented by Ethan Hawkes at Cannes, explores the lives of the Hollywood stars, their passion for acting and off-screen disputes

Paul Newman y Joanne Woodward, 50 años de amor y compromiso artístico

Gregorio Belinchón
Cannes, May 25, 2022

There was a time when there were no bigger movie stars than Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Even now, decades later, these Hollywood icons have not been forgotten. Indeed, a new documentary series called The Last Movie Stars is taking a closer look at the famous couple.

Ethan Hawke
Photo by Bryan Bedder

Ethan Hawke Doesn't Think Cheating Is That Big of a Deal, Says "Our Species Is Not Monogamous"

"To act all indignant, that your world has been rocked because your lover wasn't faithful to you, is a little bit like acting rocked that your hair went gray," the actor says

By BRUNA NESSIF DEC 02, 2013 4:35 PM

Well, at least Ethan Hawke is being upfront and honest.

The 43-year-old actor got very candid on the topic of love and fidelity during an interview with Mr. Porter, speaking about his past relationship with actress Uma Thurman, his current relationship with Ryan Hawke and his thoughts on people's "childish" view of monogamy.

Ethan Hawke / Why we love graphic novels

Ethan Hawke, actor, writer, director

Why we love graphic novels

Sunday 5 November 2017

How did you get into graphic novels?

I got into graphic novels as a teenager. I loved reading them on the bus to school. They used to make these supercool graphic novels of classics, like Moby-Dick, Macbeth, etc. The combination of the artwork and the literature just made life better. It shook the library dust off and made the stories alive for me.

What do you love about them?

I love staring at drawings anyway. And when juxtaposed with a real story… It’s a lot like what acting aspires to be. An interpretive art. Delivering secret messages.

Do you have a favourite?

Essex County by Jeff Lemire. It’s the Catcher in the Rye of graphic novels.

Where do you buy them?

My favourite spot is Forbidden Planet in New York. It’s magic. You’re a kid again, immediately. In the good way.

Any rituals around reading them?

The important thing is not to read them. Absorb them. Study the image. Find the message woven into the artist’s work. Don’t just look at the words. In a good graphic novel the words and the images are involved in a dance – like two stars smashing into each other, spraying silver and gold.

Ethan Hawke’s graphic novel with illustrator Greg Ruth, Indeh: A Story of the Apache Wars, is published by Grand Central

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Ethan Hawke / This much I Know / ‘The most romantic thing I’ve done is have sex’

 Ethan Hawke: ‘I am a giddy, ludicrous optimist. My team can lose and I’m already thinking about the next season. You can’t bring me down.’ Photograph: Alan Clarke for the Observer

Interview

THIS MUCH I KNOW

Ethan Hawke: ‘The most romantic thing I’ve done is have sex’

The actor, 47, on being an optimist, avoiding marriage advice and why other people make him anxious

Natalie Evans-Harding
Saturday 16 December 2017

I have so many bad habits it’s impossible to measure the worst. My son would say I don’t take enough care with how I dress, my daughter might say I work too much, and my wife that I can’t seem to help in the kitchen at all. But in my opinion I have none.

The 10 best films of 2013 No 6 / Before Midnight

The 10 best films of 2013

No 6

Before Midnight

Our countdown continues with a third installment in the saga of Jesse and Celine, now married with children and on holiday in Greece 

Catherine Shoard
Monday 16 December 2013 12.03 GMT

Another year, another sequel, another shameless attempt to cash in on prior brand recognition and to exploit fans desperate for another hit of their favourite franchise. So why was Richard Linklater's second sequel to Before Sunrise greeted with a loving embrace, rather than the spitting backlash that awaits most reboots?

It's because the Before trilogy (actually, I'm holding out for an octet) has most in common with something like the Up documentary series, which traces the progress of a group of people at seven year intervals. The three Before films, spaced with nine years between them, are so brilliantly constructed, so seamlessly blended with the actual aging of their actor/screenwriters that they had started to assume the role of real-life touchstones, rather than works of art.

There was no pressure, then, for this third instalment. No worry that in tripping up the film-makers would not just be trampling the legacy of two minor masterpieces but pulling the plug on something so special and tangible it goes beyond movies. In fact, of course, this turned out pretty much perfect.

Celine and Jesse drive along in their rental car, have lunch with friends, stroll through the fields and look at goats, kiss and row in a hotel room, then have what might be a reconciliation by the sea. That's about it. But for my money, the technical achivement is just as towering as Gravity's. Those precisely-paced long, long scenes, just dialogue, so casual and natural it couldn't be improvised, knock you over, again and again.

Midnight isn't quite flawless. The ending doesn't have the same satisfying crackle of Sunset; the lunch scene is stagey, your sympathies are too skewed away from Delpy. But these imperfections enhance the picture, make you appreciate it all the more, mean you care for its characters in a way that isn't fleeting or situation specific. Before Midnight transcends cinema. It feels like a commitment. It feels like it's for life.

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