These days, Ethan Hawke is a household name, known for a variety of successful acting projects, from the Before trilogy to Sinister, First Reformed, and more recently, The Black Phone. The actor has been nominated for four Oscars in his career for acting and screenwriting, as well as winning a Critic’s Choice Movie Award and an Independent Spirit Award.
However, before Hawke bagged himself prestigious accolades, he made his film debut in the 1985 movie Explorers alongside River Phoenix. The movie performed incredibly poorly, and the young Hawke considered giving up completely. Reflecting on the project, he later told The New York Times, “Then it came out and it was a bomb. I stopped acting after that. I would never recommend that a kid act.”
Yet, something inside Hawke told him to keep going, and after he realised college was not for him, he decided to try his hand at acting again. “I heard about the audition for Dead Poets Society, auditioned and got it,” he said. The movie was directed by Peter Weir, a key figure of the Australian New Wave who had previously helmed Picnic at Hanging Rock and would go on to direct The Truman Show in 1998.
Hawke starred alongside Robert Sean Leonard, Josh Charles, Dylan Kussman, Gale Hansen, and, most notably, Robin Williams. The late comic actor played a teacher at the all-boys boarding school where Hawke’s character is sent, inspiring him and his friends to devote themselves to poetry. Before Williams was cast, actors such as Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks and Dustin Hoffman were considered for the role.
It’s hard to imagine John Keating being played by anyone other than Williams, who gives a fantastic performance, including a memorable speech in which he urges the boys to live extraordinary lives. Yet, off-screen, Hawke didn’t find Williams as inspirational as his Dead Poet’s Society character did.
Hawke, who was a teenager at the time, found Williams rather “irritating” due to his wisecracking nature – the very quality that has made him such an adored figure. Speaking on a panel at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Hawke revealed that “I thought Robin hated me. He had a habit of making a ton of jokes on set. At 18, I found that incredibly irritating.”
He added: “He wouldn’t stop, and I wouldn’t laugh at anything he did.” However, by the end of the shoot, Hawke appreciated Williams’ presence, and the elder actor managed to secure him his first agent, allowing him to kickstart his career even further.
Hawke continued: “He called, saying, ‘Robin Williams says you are going to do really well.’ There was this scene in the film when he makes me spontaneously make up a poem in front of the class. He made this joke at the end of it, saying that he found me intimidating. I thought it was a joke. As I get older, I realise there is something intimidating about young people’s earnestness, their intensity. It is intimidating – to be the person they think you are. Robin was that for me.”
