Surprise incoming for my fellow #HawkeHeads—I used to hate Ethan Hawke. This is partly my fault, because I have still never seen Dead Poets Society (I’m a School Ties girlie, if we’re talking mid-century boys prep school movies launching multiple heartthrob careers) or Gattaca. But it is mostly his fault, because the first thing I did see him in was Reality Bites. This viewing happened during a very skeptical time of my life—skeptical of pretentious boys, boys who didn’t wash their hair, and boys who really thought their daddy issues gave them license to treat everyone around them like shit. If we’re being honest, I’m still in that time of my life, and expect I will be forever. But I especially rejected the premise that a boy like that would be a romantic option, let alone the romantic choice for my beloved Winona.

Before Sunrise only further hardened my heart against Ethan. Like, of course he’s playing that American guy wearing a turtleneck in Europe, hitting on the most ethereally French blonde anyone has ever seen. How predictably insufferable. So, too, was his Hamlet adaptation; though for some reason, I find any actor playing Hamlet insufferable. More skepticism about pretentious boys with weaponized daddy issues, I guess. By the time we got to Training Day I was clowning him for no reason. “I simply would not have done anything Denzel said, you dumb rookie,” I said.1

Until. Before Sunset. A movie I love so much that I own three different copies of it. And, relatedly, a movie that cracked my heart open and taught me about regret, heartache, and what a rare gift a soul connection really is. The undisputed king of the trilogy, if you ask me. And the movie that forced me to appreciate Ethan Hawke as an actor and as a pillar of the indie film community.

Look at how he listens to her, like she’s a seashell he’s put up to his ear because he misses the sound of the ocean.

I hate the way people will say someone is a character actor with movie star looks. That seems more like an omni-directional insult than an insightful compliment. So when I say that I was surprised to realize that Ethan Hawke is extremely talented, I’m not talking about his handsomeness as the obstacle. It’s more about how he was primarily marketed to us in the 90s, as the Pretty Boy with Hidden Depths. He just read to me as too callow to have any convincing depths, hidden or otherwise. And he seemed too anxious to prove how deep he really was. But now, it seems something about aging has mellowed him out. He has an omnivore’s filmography—westerns, romcoms, and lots. of. horror. stacked alongside all of his dramatic, Oscar-nominated Richard Linklater collaborations and dark-night-of-the-soul movies. He directs documentaries, he writes novels, and he pops up in delightful cameos.2 This boy is working. In 2025 he starred in two TV shows and three movies, earning his first Best Actor Oscar nomination and all.

The Oscar nomination is validating for me personally, but not entirely because I’m such a fan of his. I don’t see Oscars, or any creative awards, as particularly valuable or insightful. Who wins an Oscar says more about the campaign their film studios were running and the mood that the Academy was in than it says about craft or cultural impact. But I felt validated because I’d spent several months telling people, “that boy is gunning for an Oscar nomination.”

He spent the fall doing the red carpet circuit for his various projects, showing up with as much enthusiasm for his horror sequel as he did for his talky biopic.3 He guested on New York-based content creators’ pages to talk about style and music and, because he’s a white male Gen Xer, why the Beatles are the greatest rock band in the history of the world. He interviewed the increasingly radioactive Sydney Sweeney for Variety’s Actors on Actors series and radiated paternal warmth. And he made this flamboyantly self-deprecating speech about Rose Byrne trashing his novel when he presented her with a New York Film Critics Circle award:

All of these pieces fit elegantly into a personally-powered Oscar campaign. Ethan wants to appear as I’ve been describing him: mellowed, omnivorous, self-deprecating. That way, there are no obstacles to seeing his talent. Nothing snuffs out your peers’ willingness to take you seriously as completely as taking yourself too seriously. Bradley Cooper has no doubt been watching Timothée Chalamet’s manic self-sabotage with a certain degree of “thank god it’s not me this time” relief.

I think this charm offensive he’s been on has worked like gangbusters, too. Especially since I think he was aiming for an Oscar nomination and not a win. I think he’s less interested in an award than he is in shoring up his reputational legacy. Winning Oscars doesn’t beget good roles the way being well-liked by your colleagues and audiences does. And, speaking as his audience, I like him! I know that a good chunk of his likability is a performance—he is a professional performer, after all, and an excellent one—and I enjoy the performance. He is still pretentious, but he’s matured enough that he wears it much better than he did in his 20s. (It probably helps that he started washing his hair.)

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