Ethan Hawke ~ actor, writer & film director

November 6, 10:46 PMActing ExaminerDeborah Smith Ford

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Ethan Green Hawke turned one year minus 40 and counting on November 6, 2009.  He is an actor, writer and film director and made his feature film debut in 1985, opposite River Phoenix in the movie Explorers before making a supporting appearance in the 1989 drama Dead Poets Society which is considered his breakthrough role.

Hawke obtained his mother's permission to attend his first casting call at age 14. He secured his first film role in 1985's Explorers, in which he played opposite River Phoenix as an alien-obsessed schoolboy who builds a spacecraft with his friends.

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 school production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, and appearances in West Windsor-Plainsboro High School productions of Meet Me in St. Louis and You Can't Take It with You followed.

At Hun School he took acting classes at the McCarter Theater on the Princeton campus, and after high school graduation he studied acting at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, eventually dropping out after he was cast in Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams (1989). He twice enrolled in New York University's English program, but dropped out both times to pursue acting roles.

Other films he has appeared in are White Fang (1991), A Midnight Clear (1992), and Alive (1993) before taking a role in the 1994 Generation X drama Reality Bites, for which he received critical acclaim. In 1995 he starred in the romantic drama Before Sunrise, and later in its sequel Before Sunset (2004).

In 2001 Hawke was cast in a supporting role in Training Day (2001), for which he received a Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category. Other films have included the science fiction feature Gattaca (1997), the title role in Michael Almereyda's Hamlet (2000), the action thriller Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), and the crime drama Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007).

Hawke has also appeared in numerous theater productions including The Seagull, Henry IV, Hurlyburly, The Cherry Orchard, The Winter's Tale and The Coast of Utopia, for which he received a Tony Award nomination. ~ Shakespeare "ties"

Ethan Hawke made his directorial debut with the 2002 independent feature Chelsea Walls. In November 2007, Hawke directed his first play, Jonathan Marc Sherman's Things We Want. Aside from acting, he has written two novels, The Hottest State (1996) and Ash Wednesday (2002). Between 1998 and 2004 Hawke was married to actress Uma Thurman.

In 1989 Hawke made his breakthrough appearance, playing shy student Todd Anderson opposite Robin Williams's inspirational English teacher in Dead Poets Society.

November 2007 Hawke directed Things We Want, a two-act play by Jonathan Marc Sherman, for the artist-driven Off-Broadway company The New Group. The following year Hawke received the Michael Mendelson Award for Outstanding Commitment to the Theater. In his acceptance speech Hawke said:

(Photo/wiki)

I don't know why they're honoring me. I think the real reason they are honoring me is to help raise money for the theater company. Whenever the economy gets hit hard, one of the first things to go is people's giving, and last on that list of things people give to is the arts because they feel it's not essential. I guess I'm here to remind people that the arts are essential to our mental health as a country."

In 2009 Hawke appeared in two plays, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, and as Autolycus in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale