Ethan Hawke has been entertaining audiences over five different decades.
It’s hard to believe, but Ethan Hawke is now in his fifties. He’s been appearing in blockbuster and critically acclaimed movies since his teenage years, making him, to people of a certain age, someone who has grown up along with them. With The Black Phone now out, it’s just the latest success in his storied career. Here are eleven more essential performances that show why Ethan Hawke is one of the best actors of his generation.
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This powerful, feel good film stars the late Robin Williams as John Keating, an English teacher who motivates his prep school students to live their best lives. Hawke plays one of those students, Todd Anderson, a shy high school junior who isn’t so sure about Keating’s approach to teaching. We watch Todd grow throughout the film as he’s slowly transformed by Keating’s ways, until he breaks out of his shell. The end shows us a heartbroken Anderson who stands up for his teacher by standing on his desk in one of the most emotional scenes you’ll ever see.
This Frank Marshall directed film tells the true story about a Uruguayan rugby team and how they fight to survive after their plane crashes in the Andes. Hawke gets the lead role as one of those survivors, Nando Parrado. Parrado is one of the film’s heroes, setting off through the freezing mountains in search of rescue. The film is a tough watch with some deep moral questions (Could you eat a dead person if it was your only chance of survival?), but it’s also a hard hitting portrayal of how strong the human spirit and body can be when all hope is lost. Here we witness what one will and must do to stay alive.
Reality Bites is one of the films responsible for making Hawke a major voice of the 90s generation. Directed by and starring Ben Stiller, along with Winona Ryder, this is a Gen X classic. We get an exploration of so many important themes of the time, from AIDS and homosexuality, to the fears acquired in early adulthood. Hawke’s Troy Dyer is a directionless man who can’t keep a job. At the plot’s core is a love story that forces Troy, after the death of his father, to finally take a risk in life and go all in with the woman he loves.
Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy consists of three films set over two decades (Before Sunrise in 1995, Before Sunset in 2004, and Before Midnight in 2013). It follows the relationship of Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delpy’s Celice, starting as a whirlwind romance between twenty-somethings in Venice and concluding with the sometimes painful reality of trying to make a relationship work after so many years together. We get an honest look at love in these films, watching two characters grow and grow apart over twenty years. There’s never much of a plot. The beauty is in simply watching these two people simply interact and have a conversation.
This sci-fi thriller gives us a dystopian world where genetic selection is used to produce children with the best genes possible. Hawke’s Vincent Freeman was born outside this selection, but pretends to be a person born in the program named Jerome. Co-starring his future wife Uma Thurman and Jude Law, the film is a chilling examination of discrimination and the ideas and consequences of genetically engineering children. While it was a dud in its theatrical release, it has gone on to become a modern sci-fi classic.
Hawke was nominated for an Academy Award and Denzel Washington took home the Oscar for Best Actor in this film that follows two Los Angeles narcotic cops over the course of one day in the gang heavy parts of the city. What we get is a fascinating thriller that sees Hawke’s Jake Hoyt as a police officer who is training to be a part of the narcotics division. Washington’s Detective Harris is his teacher, but we quickly learn that Harris is a corrupt man who’s scarier than the bad guys he’s supposed to be taking down. The film’s exploration of real life corruption in Los Angeles is the backdrop for a suspenseful clash between the once good and the still good.
Sidney Lumet directed this crime thriller starring Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hawke and Hoffman play two brothers who decide to rob their parents' jewelry store. Naturally, since this is a movie, everything goes wrong. Guns are fired, people die, and the brothers are in disarray. The ping pong pace of out of order scenes and shifting points-of-view gives us a chaotic masterpiece. The film was a critical darling, ending up on many critics Top 10 best movies of 2007.
Hawke turned to horror in this frightening film written by C. Robert Cargill and directed by Scott Derrickson, the creators of this year’s The Black Phone. Hawke plays a crime writer named Ellison Oswalt who discovers grisly tapes depicting murders that have occured inside his new home. The Super 8 reels are absolutely chilling and the villainous Mr. Boogie is one of modern horror’s scariest bad guys. We don’t get a happy ending, but what we do get is a phenomenal horror film that one 2020 study concluded to be the scariest movie ever made.
Mason Evans Sr. in ‘Boyhood’ (2014)
Hawke reunited with Richard Linklater for this movie that was filmed over the course of twelve years. Here we get to watch a boy grow up between the ages of six to eighteen. It’s a clever concept and required tremendous dedication to have a cast keep returning to film scenes for more than a decade. Hawke plays the father of the young boy we watch grow up. It’s an emotionally powerful tale about a divorced father struggling to be there for his son as he grows from a little boy to an angry teen. Hawke has so many memorable films throughout his career, but this just might be his best.
Hawke took his tremendous acting skills down a different road for this film by playing a Protestant minister named Ernst Toller struggling to keep hold of his faith. He is the head of a sparsely attended church in New York. While counseling a woman played by Amanda Seyfried, his lonely world is turned upside down by love and deepening suicidal thoughts. The film is a slow burn and a hard watch, but it’s also one of Hawke’s most praised performances. Here Hawke shows us what hope looks like even when it all seems lost.
This one is not a film but a Showtime miniseries. Hawke is John Brown, the real life abolitionist leader who gave his life in the fight against slavery. Hawke co-created and executive produced this story as an attempt to give due appreciation to Brown. Based on an award-winning novel of the same name by James McBride, the plot follows a teenage freed slave as he joins Brown in his battle to destroy slavery. The miniseries is an emotional epic that represents John Brown and his story well.
Shawn Van Horn is a Film & TV Features Writer for Collider. He has written two novels and is neck deep in the querying trenches. He is also a short story maker upper and poet with a dozen publishing credits to his name. He lives in small town, Ohio, where he likes to watch rasslin' and movies.
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