Ethan Hawke Quotes

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.

I have had so many bad auditions.

A good movie humanizes people.

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.

Its difficult to do a genre film well, and it doesnt matter if youre 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.

It's always a unique challenge when you're working with somebody where English is their second language.

It is quite rare to find people who are really dedicated to a level of excellence. Most of us are really quite lazy most of the time.

People are conditioned to just you know, like, you know we're like little birdies going to the bird feeder you know, or the little cows going to the salt lick. We just like what we've seen before.

I've had several moments in my career where it seemed like I might not age out of the bracket the world wants to put you in. It's hard to keep growing up inside the performing arts. It's very difficult, and presents a lot of unique challenges.

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.

It just makes sense to remember gratitude and the place that gratitude should have in your life, and that none of us are owed these wonderful experiences, and we should always make the best of them.

The kindest compliments I have ever heard are when cops tell me Training Day and Assault on Precinct 13 inspired them to become cops. The funniest compliments I have ever heard are when people tell me that 'I love your band Sugar Ray.

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

It was when I was on the set of Dead Poets Society.There was actor,his name was Norman Lloyd. One day he took us all aside and said, "You guys don't even understand what a powerful experience you're having. You don't really understand what a gift this is." We were going, "What does he mean?" It was that really wonderful opportunities aren't to be taken for granted. I often found that it had embedded itself in my memory.

Set designers, costume designers, actors, writers, music, that's what is beautiful.

It was a really strange experience. It was very creative for Alejandro Amenábar. It was almost like it was the most I ever felt like I was helping someone paint. They had a very clear idea of what they wanted it to look like, sound like, be like. So, there was no operating outside the box. The only way to help him was to try to really be a part of his imagination and try to make it happen. He's a super kind and loving person. So, you wanted to help him. It just was none of my normal ways of helping a director work at all. So, it was a unique experience for me that way.

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.

I have totally hitched my wagon to the horse of storytelling, and the idea that none of us know why we're born, or why we're gonna die, or what we're planted here, or what's on the other side of the galaxy, or when time began, or when time end. The whole nature of reality is pretty up for grabs, really.

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.

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.

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.

It was fantastic to be on the set again with Denzel (Washington) and Antoine (Fuqua) and then to have the situation be so different. We weren't making a sequel to Training Day. We were in the middle of the desert riding around on some horses.

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.

Well, there's a great Marlon Brando quote that to do something well you have to spiritually marry your director. You have to be making the same movie they are in that you have to try to help their imagination be better, and more full, and more fully realized, but you can't have a different imagination because then you end up - and you see this a lot in movies - where it feels like they were making five different films.

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?

My first car was kind of sad. My first car was when my parents had completely worn out their Toyota Corolla that they had for 16 years or something. They gave me, for my 19th birthday, this really ancient Toyota. So that was my first car. And I loved it. I thought it was amazing, and I drove it cross-country. It was not aesthetically appealing in any way. It was it fast. It did not handle well, but it lasted forever. I drove cross-country and back, and then I gave it to my sister, and she drove it for another 10 years.

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

I'm magically delicious.

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.

The Woodstock Film festival is among the finest of a dying breed: a festival that isn’t trying to sell you anything, but simply and beautifully celebrating the art & craft of filmmaking.

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.

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.

We all have this fantasy of finding our one true love who's going to be the perfect fit. It's just not a reality.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

If you don't give inspiration an opportunity, it will never arrive.

Directing is like putting together a collage.

If you don't risk doing something foolish, you'll never do anything special.

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?

Friends can hurt you, but the possibility of pain with lovers is so much greater because your expectations are so high. You don't ask as much of your friends.

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.

Don't you find it odd," she continued, "that when you're a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you're older, somehow they act offended if you even try.

In truth, the world is a complicated place.

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.