Ethan Hawke Compares Acting to “the Joys of Doing Drugs,” Talks About Being “Slightly Disappointed That I’m Not a Wizard or a Jedi”
In a Venice master class, he discussed Richard Linklater, Peter Weir, how "greed runs our universe" and how "embarrassing" it is, for the industry, that he has only worked with a handful of female filmmakers.
The joys, magic and business side of filmmaking, his take on independent and blockbuster movies, including Star Wars and Harry Potter, as well as his collaborations with directors Richard Linklater and Peter Weir, and his lack of work with many female filmmakers, were all part of a Venice Film Festival master class featuring actor-director Ethan Hawke in Venice on Monday.
Early on in the session, which was live-streamed, the star recalled coming to Venice for Dead Poets Society. “It was my first film festival. I was 18 years old. We showed the movie down the street, and it was an incredible experience,” Hawke recalled. “There were a lot of people who made the movie with us there at the premiere, and you could feel the movie cast a spell, and you could feel people’s response to the film.”
He continued that director Weir “was at that time, and still is, one of the very few master craftsmen I’ve ever met, and to work with him as a young person, and to absorb what he had to teach and then to see its effect in action” was impressive. “It was an act of collective imagination…. He was very good at getting a group of artisans to have the same imagination and the same dream, and then to watch that dream be given to others and received. It’s very powerful.”
Hawke then added, to laughs: “It was kind of like how one hears about the joys of doing drugs. You just want to do it again. It’s such a wonderful feeling because you don’t feel alone.” The creative continued: “There’s a strange double-edged sword to being an actor, which is that on the outside, you get celebrated in success, but the true joys of performing are in disappearing…you feel yourself disappear and become part of this dream. And that’s the feeling that’s so wonderful. And you see the dream live in other people, and that’s where the high comes from. And no sooner did I leave Venice at 18 years old that I just wanted to do it again. And as I look out at you, I’m so grateful to be here with you and to get to be a part of this still.” The crowd reacted with a big round of applause.