Ethan Hawke Quotations

In New York, you've got Donald Trump, Woody Allen, a crack addict and a regular Joe, and they're all on the same subway car.

If you can understand the inner life, then you can wear the uniform, the tattoos, or whatnot and realize that the things that are different about us become superficial.

It's difficult to do a genre film well, and it doesn't matter if you're talking vampire movies or 'Dawn of the Dead' or 'The Thing' or 'Escape From New York.' Those kind of movies, they understand what the old-school B-movie is supposed to be, they get the throwback of it.

When you do 'Before Sunset,' you know while it's a limited audience, there was a very small group of people that love 'Before Sunrise.' You feel a certain pressure to make sure that you uphold a level of quality that has been a bar. You set a bar and you have to at least match it.

Everyone has to pay their child support, and no matter if you're a Hollywood actor or anyone else, it's always a little bit more than you want to pay.

When you start becoming really successful, the demons start to tempt you - the demons of vanity and self importance, drug abuse, the feelings of fraudulence. But, it's also a thrill. That's what I found weird.

I'm horrified to admit that I just love Salinger. I was devastated to find out that other people feel the same way.

I kill flies, I eat meat, you know, whatever.

I auditioned for Robert Redford once and I was so starstruck I couldn't even speak. I had a mic wire at a screen test clipped to me and then I got kind of nervous and I paced in a circle and then took a step and tripped and fell on my face. You just have to forgive yourself and keep going on.

As a young man... you don't know anything about yourself. And add on to that, you're on the cover of magazines. People are interviewing you about what you think. You feel like a real phony.

It was never in my dreams to make my personal life anybody else's business.

To get to be somebody who gets to love what they do for a living, that's so rare, and so there must be some kind of price you have to pay.

There's some kind of actors that can radically change who they are from movie to movie. I've never really been that kind of actor. I enjoy changing the worlds that I'm in.

The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit.

At every turn, when humanity is asked the question, 'Do you want temporary economic gain or long-term environmental loss, which one do you prefer,' we invariably choose the money.

I always felt that a marriage works best at a farm... where you're together and everybody has clear-cut roles; they have chores, 'you take care of this' and you know. But it's hard.

I think having nature be a part of people's lives helps all of us see ourselves as part of something larger.

The girls who like me aren't the ones I like. Or, if I do and they want to commit, I suddenly need tons of time with my friends.

We live in a funny time. If you don't go corporate, you can't compete. You're relegated as irrelevant. People used to admire that.

Right now the only people I can really fall in love with are people who don't really, truly want me around. Now why do I do that?

It is very difficult for any couple who are married if both people are ambitious. I don't know if it's just too hard to be married to a woman that wants to be a movie star.

In your mid-twenties, the paint is still wet on who you are.

I did one sci-fi movie. I did 'Gattaca.' I liked 'Gattaca' because that was always the kind of science fiction I really dug, the non-action oriented sci-fi.

One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.

I don't know what has happened to movies, but lately every movie is at least 20 minutes too long. It used to be that if you were three hours long it was because it was epic - a movie about Gandhi; something with very important subject matters.

If you're not a real chameleon of an actor and if you're not one of those guys who can really shape-change themselves all the time, one of the ways to keep pushing yourself and keep changing is to be in different kinds of movies.

I thought I was so much smarter than everybody. And I'm not.

'Brooklyn's Finest,' this is the kind of movie that's why I want to be an actor, to tell real-life stories. This is where I feel my job is, to interpret life.

I remember being a kid and sleeping over at my friend's house and staying up late and watching 'Nosferatu.' Vampire movies are supposed to be secret and bad. They should be rated R.

The theater, for me, has always been a place where I'm free to be more creative, a place to sharpen my tools.

Nothing teaches you like getting leveled. And I got leveled in my early 30s. Nothing went exactly the way I thought it would.

There's something about knowing life is finite that makes it so precious.

I was being taken around by a press agent at the Venice Film Festival at age 18. Was it fun? Sure. But it was a dangerous path to be walking on as far as having a substantive life. Because the casualty rate at the Venice Film Festival for 18-year-olds? High.

Right now, if you're interested in being a dramatic actor, they're not making that many just regular dramas. Movies have to have some other thing going on.

Some people burn out, and some people like Clint Eastwood, he was a wild, international movie star in his 30s, and he's doing the best work of his life now. Go figure.

The biggest problem in my life is trying to be the kind of man that I want to be, the father that I want to be, and how to process the failure of my marriage.

I think that as soon as you think of yourself as a famous person or anything like that, you're objectifying yourself in some weird way.

I'd be lying if I said I had confidence in every choice I've made, that I have faith in every film I do on every shot.

If I do three movies in a year, I don't feel like acting ever again.

My relationship to reality has been so utterly skewed for so long that I don't even notice it any more. It's just my reality.

The more kind of head trippy sci-fi. I always like that. I was a big 'Twilight Zone' freak.

When an analogy is really singing, it's what you want it to be.

You know, I auditioned for 'Titanic.' Sometimes I muse on what would have happened. That would have been such a different life.

I met a lot of famous people when I was about 24. And none of them seemed very appealing. And so I didn't know why I would struggle to be that kind of person.

In all of our society, but especially in Hollywood, there is an obsession with perfection that can lead to self-loathing and neurosis and all that kind of stuff.

I think it's my job to risk looking foolish. One of the things I've learned from the actors I've worked with is you don't get something for nothing. If you don't risk looking foolish, you'll never do anything special.

I think that if you walk through this life and I end up being a bad father, then it won't matter anything else I achieved in my life. It will all be irrelevant.

I've had a lot of experience in independent film, and about how to choose. You've got to be very discerning about where you put your five bucks, and where you cut and what you don't cut.

If my kids are doing well, then my life is going pretty well. And if my kids aren't doing well, it doesn't matter how the other elements of my life are. It's kind of amazing to have a context like that. This is really wonderful.

The thing that makes a great genre movie is one that's not just entertainment, not just horror or sci-fi or whatever. The ones I love are the genre pictures with some subversive message underlying it all.

My grandfather was a great example of his generation,

I was the first one in my group to get married. Now I've split up, they're all married. They're like 'Come with us to our couple's retreat'. No thanks.

He made it cool to be a thinking person seeking a spiritual experience.

He was such a punk when he was a kid, ... It can be hard growing up in front of the public that way, and I always admire people who handle that with grace.

There are a great many people that see independent film as a stepping stone to some kind of grand idea of some very large accomplishment, ... And there are some that see independent film as accomplishment enough, of pushing forward thought and telling stories that are hard to get told, pushing the medium forward, and John ... has been that for me and a lot of other people, I know.

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. And it's something I know a lot about, and so I feel like that's the book that I should write.

I believe in the healing restorative power of art and communication. And so that's probably my rule. But that doesn't apply to bedtimes. And stuff like that.

And the joy of my job - and it's really true - is that it's constantly evolving and changing.

Oh, I like going down the rabbit hole. You know, that's kind of my job. When you play Macbeth, you gotta dive down that one. The trick is figuring out how to do it with love and a sense of humor so you can pop back out again. But, kind of the actor's job is to go down the rabbit hole.

And the best films feel like a fist punching you in the solar plexus and all elements of the filmmaking process - the acting, the design, the cinematography, the music, is all working to one end.

It's interesting to work with Emma [Watson] so quickly after Harry Potter. When we shot this movie, it wasn't that long after Harry Potter was finished, and it's knowing that's a big transition in her life. She's a very talented young woman.

I enjoyed meeting Emma [Watson]. I have a soft spot in my heart for child actors growing up. I know how hard that is. Having gone through that experience myself, I have a lot of sensitivity to it. For lack of a better word, I just feel like I love these kids, and I want them all to grow up and love themselves, and not get caught up in the wrong things, and to learn all the different things this profession has to give, and to understand it.

Emma Watson is my kids' favorite actor on the planet. They never took me more seriously than when I was working with her.

I love working on scripts. I love coming up with ideas about what people would dress like or talk like. I love all that.

The script [of Regression] wasn't the draw for me. It was largely Alejandro [Amenabar] and his way of talking. To hear him talking about the script was way more interesting than the script. He wrote it, and so, English is his second language. It's an interesting thing. I've had that before. I was directed by Alfonso Cuarón before, too. It's always interesting when you're being directed by somebody like that. So much of directing is about communication, and finding the right words, and what it means, and how to convey certain emotions and ideas.

Whenever a really passionate, talented filmmaker seems to have an interest in me, I take it very seriously because I like to work.

Alejandro Amenábar has a unique way of approaching movies and thinking about something which was new to me. It was different. I have a lot of respect for him so I just took a gamble.

Alejandro Amenábar is a very interesting filmmaker. I had really liked The Others, which was a movie he made with Nicole Kidman a few years ago. He made a very compelling case about how much he wanted me to be in this movie. Whenever a really passionate, talented filmmaker seems to have an interest in me, I take it very seriously because I like to work.

I feel like everyone I meet is an imaginary friend. I don't know. The older I get the more I wonder what's real.

For me, the real goal is to integrate. The thing that I'm most happy with is the fact that I've been able to keep doing all of it - to keep writing, and to keep acting in movies, and to keep acting on the stage, to keep directing plays. I find that they feed each other, and that I learn about acting from directing and I learn about writing from acting.

I meet a lot of young people that want to go into acting because they think of what it will do for them. If that's the case, it can be a very, very painful profession. But if the kids want to do acting because they love it, and they want to give to it, then they can have a great life. It's really about as simple as how you look at it.

Your development as a person should coincide with your development in all aspects of your life.

Sometimes people save the best part of themselves for their art.

I've turned down good directors before because I knew the part didn't speak to me and I've worked with less talented directors before because the part I had such passion for.

I did this movie, Predestination, and it's one of my favorite movies I've ever made, because sci-fi really lets you talk about ideas in a way that's not pretentious.

I really did Regression to work with Alejandro [Amenabar]. I found him very interesting. His movie, The Others, is one of the better scary movies of the last period of time.

Years ago I was going to play Chet Baker in another movie and I really felt drawn to that character and the script is good and I met with Robert and we seemed simpatico and we developed. But I had a real passion for that role and that brought me deep into that film 'cause I got the sense that Robert [Budreau] was going to really let me be creative inside this part.

The drones are really interesting - how have the troops withdrawn from Afghanistan? Because we've upped the drone strikes and most of the country doesn't even really know what that means or who we're killing or... it's such a new weapon that we don't know what the long term impacts of that kind of military action is going to be.

How to make a scary movie human, take a movie like Sinister. How can I make that guy so real so that the scary elements of it are more scary and it functions as a genre movie - as the way it's supposed to, you want to hear a ghost story at midnight, that's a good one - but how do you fill it up with humanity inside, in staying true to the genre? You know? Does that make sense?

Few years ago I did a movie, Good Kill, about drone pilots and for four or five months I'm obsessed with the Air Force.

Alejandro Amenabar is a different kind of director than I lot of the directors I've asked for. He really asks you to enter his dream as opposed to, you know, a guy like Sidney Lumet or something is going to ask you to create a character almost like a documentary. He wants you to make the people really real and he's going to capture it like a documentarian.

If you study the history of mankind, it seems to be a history of violence. Certainly the history of art, whether you look at paintings or movies or plays or whatever, is just a litany of murder and death.

I'd really rather that nobody had a gun, and then nobody would have to worry about it. That would be more my theory. In America, there's this knee-jerk response that more walls and more guns make people safer, and I'm entirely suspect of that way of thinking.

Good genre movies are a little bit like trying to write a haiku. There are certain things that you have to do to fulfill the audience's expectations, but inside that, you have complete freedom to talk about whatever you want. Who wants to see a movie about gun violence in America and class? But, if you set it in this terrifying, fun, roller coaster ride of a movie, you can talk about whatever you want. That's been the game that genre movies play, when they do it well.

Nightmares are a strange thing. Your worst fear is sometimes something you enjoy thinking about, for some strange reason. I don't know why that is, but it's some kind of fantasy that people play out. "What would I do to protect my children? I'd do anything." And then, you watch it play out. I'm petrified of such a thing.

We're fascinated by things that scare us, and one of the things that scares us is violence. Violence exists. It's a real part of our lives. We are obsessed with what we're scared of, but it certainly doesn't define us.

The truth is that the more you get paid, the less freedom you have. They never pay you for nothing.

I started acting when I was 13 years old and I feel like I really admire actors who are these kind of amazing shape-changing people, that they almost can turn themselves into other people.

One of the things I can do is to try to put myself in different kinds of movies and that kind of subtly changes my work. By the time my obituary is written, I want there to be a great western and a great comedy.

The only thing I can point to of why I survived is I have a family that loves me and never wanted any money from me.

I have a daughter and the thing I wish for her is not love, fame, money or anything like that. It's just one great best friend. You know, if you have somebody that has your back, you're gonna be all right.

If you covet fame, if you covet all the superficial accolades, you're gonna be miserable 'cause you're never going to get enough praise. If you covet contributing something substantive to movies, music, literature, then you won't be unhappy.

Whenever actors tout off about doing their own stunts, it's always ... they're so protective of you that I always know these stunt guys are so good [and] they're never going to put you in danger. But it's fun to do something kind of exciting, even something as simple as driving 70 through a tunnel with five motorcycles ... it sounds simple, but it's actually really nerve-wracking.

Sometimes in the life of an actor you're not getting offered any jobs that speak to you. The trouble with acting is that you're only as good as your opportunities.

It's difficult to make any kind of action movie that might be unique or worth watching.

The older I get, the more obvious it is that you're not really in control of your life, you're a part of a larger wave, no matter who you are.

Time is so much a part of what makes you close to people.

Time is what creates trust.

The constant buzz and pressure and noise and static of the Internet, and the way it makes young people feel makes it difficult to grow up and develop the way one might want to.

It's so hard for every young person, trying to figure out the adult you want to be.