Ethan Hawke is trending- with the highly praised release of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood and now the Spierig Brothers’ film Predestination, he is proving once again why he deserves to be on top. Playing a time traveling agent who is on a mission to stop future crimes from happening (click here for our review), he creates this thrilling, yet emotional journey for audiences to fall in love with. Our contributing writer Jasper talks to Ethan about some really interesting topics at the press day in Beverly Hills, getting into Ethan’s creative process of choosing the roles he plays and the prospect of time travel, to which Ethan exclaims, “we are all traveling through time, all the time.” We begin:

WAS IT STORY OR DIRECTOR THAT BROUGHT YOU TO THIS PROJECT?

I made Daybreakers with these guys and I just believed in them. I’ve been doing this long enough to recognize a certain look in somebody’s eye and they had this sensibility of people who are going to make great films. They work so hard and care about every detail. They obsess about every situation. Daybreakers was a good experience for me and I really liked it, but I could also tell that they had better films in their future. They’re such serious young men that I really wanted to work with them again.

HOW DID YOU MEET THE SPIERIG BROTHERS INITIALLY TO GET INVOLVED WITH DAYBREAKERS?

They made a really strange movie called Undead which they made with their friend for about five dollars and their own computer. It has a little cult following and my brothers really liked it so I’d seen it and when they came to me with Daybreakers, I knew who they were. They’re so good with playing with computers they did a little mock-up of me as Jess in Before Sunset as a vampire and I immediately liked them.

Click here to read our interview with Peter and Michael Spierig. 

HOW DID YOU MAKE THE CHARACTER YOUR OWN?

Part of the way that I work is making sure that it is going to be a good movie. Thinking about it from my character’s point of view is something I do, but one of the things you have to do is get yourself in a position to succeed. This is a really hard movie storytelling-wise. I mean, it’s extremely original, but whenever you’re doing something original it’s easy to fail because you’re not walking down terrain that hasn’t been walked a lot. One of the things I really liked about this movie is that it is unapologetically weird. Most movies now are trying to please a certain demographic, and this movie is really just original. It’s is own voice and that’s the genius of Robert Heinlein. He was a sophisticated thinker and science fiction in general, at its best, has an ability to talk about deeply philosophical themes without being pretentious or boring.

For me, what was unique about the character was the loneliness. I really felt that this is a deeply, deeply lonely person. The transgender aspect of the character is so interesting. All of us, to lesser or greater extents, have felt alone. And when you feel alone, like you don’t belong, it can be very painful. If you felt alone all the time, if you really had no home and no family, there would be a deep loneliness to it. But, of course, the lion’s share of the performance of this movie fell on Sarah. She just give such a phenomenal performance and you know our performance are tied together. I remember when was doing Gattaca, it was Jude Law’s first big film. It was fun to be a part of introducing the world to Jude because he’s such a special performer and I felt the same way about Sarah. The movie hinged on an unknown actress giving a dynamite performance. She couldn’t be known or the twist would be screwed and she needed to be great.

Sometimes, I’ll read something really good, but I know in my heart that I’m not the right actor for this. There’s another actor. I don’t love this enough.

 

YOU HAD EMPATHY FOR [SARAH], BUT IT TOOK AWHILE. I THINK YOU WOULD HAVE TO GIVE [THE NARRATIVE] AWAY IF YOU HAD MIRRORED SOME ASPECTS, BUT THERE WERE SOME SIMILARITIES THERE. [PAUSE] I JUST ANSWERED YOUR QUESTION FOR YOU. 

[Laughs]The trick is to be truthful, but not making it so obvious that you give it away. It was a real dance with that. In a way, it was something very, very beautiful in the movie, which is about masculine and feminine at war with itself, hunting itself. You can make a case that that’s to be true of all of us and that until will find some balance we’re going to keep traveling through space and time hurting ourselves. Something about the movie stumbles upon something really rich to me.

DID YOU LOOK INTO A LOT OF GENDER THEORY BEFORE THE ROLE? I WAS TALKING WITH SARAH AND SHE SAID SHE OBVIOUSLY DID A LOT.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that over the course of my life. It’s interesting, I think a lot of the best writing really does deal with that, but it was particularly acute for Sarah which I think she does beautifully. The hard thing for her is that she’s giving this unbelievable performance and it’s a genre film. If this was a small little movie about a transgender person she would win awards for this, but because the concept of the movie is so huge, you know science fiction never wins awards.

YOU SAID SOMETHING REALLY INTERESTING [IN THE PRESS NOTES]- YOU SAID THAT IN OUR PAST, WE ARE PREDETERMINED TO DO WHAT WE DID, YET WE ALWAYS HAVE THE AVENUES OF THE FUTURE. THAT THE IDEA OF THE PAST IS PREDETERMINED. 

Definitely. It seems like he is in this rut of this “figure-eight” in time that he can’t break out of. Its interesting, you know, why can’t you change it? And that’s how I often feel. We all have certain nights where we can’t sleep, you don’t know what to do whether it’s a relationship, job decision, life decision, whatever it is. You have no idea which way you’re going to go. And two years later, it was so obvious that you were going to go the way you went. Why is that? Why does it feel like our life is walking on a razor’s edge? And then in hindsight, it’s like “Oh obviously!” It’s so strange. Somehow the movie always makes me think about that. Then, of course, there is another level of the movie that is that amazing line: “I know who I am. Who are all you zombies?” I don’t want to ruin it, but why are we all so asleep? We’re not asking ourselves these questions about why we’re born, who our ancestors are and where we’re going. That’s the part about Robert Heinlein that I just love. That line is right out of the short story.

GOING OFF OF THE TIME ASPECT OF THE MOVIE, YOU JUST DID BOYHOOD– 

Which is a time travel movie in and of itself.

YES, OF COURSE. THE BEFORE TRILOGY ALSO DEALS A LOT WITH TIME. IS THAT A SUBJECT YOU FIND YOURSELF ATTRACTED TO? 

Maybe it’s just because I started acting young, that it’s just something I constantly think about. I think I found a peer in Richard Linklater. I mean, he obsesses about it too. But, I’ll never forget even as a young person deciding what college to go to, realizing that it was the first decision that I was going to make that was going to be on my obituary. [Laughs] It’s this thing we get a finite amount of and we don’t know what it is, yet everything is in relation to it. I’m even fascinated on the opposite side of it in terms of longevity. I mean, getting to work on Shakespeare plays. It’s fascinating to be on stage and getting a laugh with a five hundred year old joke. [Laughs] It almost feels like time travel. Theres a couple of jokes in Macbeth, which I did last year, and the audience laughed at this line. And then you start picturing the thousands of audiences through time laughing. He murders the king, and this guy comes out and he says “‘Twas a rough night” and then he says “Twas a rough night.” It’s really weird. It makes you feel like you’re part of this time continuity. And that’s what I think something about Predestination, the movie, is getting at. That we are all traveling through time, all the time. But, the nice thing about science fiction is that it lets you talk about it in a fun way, as opposed to a preachy way. And, the beauty of Boyhood, is that it almost doesn’t talk about it at all. It just presents it.

AND OF COURSE, IT’S BEEN GETTING A LOT OF ACCOLADES AND AWARDS CONSIDERATION. WHAT IS INTERESTING IS THAT IT IS ONE OF THE MOVIES FROM EARLIER IN THE YEAR AND IT’S STILL RESONATING WITH PEOPLE, AND PEOPLE ARE STILL DISCOVERING IT. ARE YOU SURPRISED AT ALL THAT IT STILL MAINTAINS THAT? 

Yeah, I remember thinking last year it was funny when Before Midnight came out, I’d never had such a well-reviewed film. But, by the end of the year, there were so many other movies that were coming out and it’s a very small, little, delicate movie. It was hard for [Boyhood] to stay in the conversation about the year’s best because, let’s face it, in December, all the movies for grown-ups come out. But, at the same time, you don’t make movies to win prizes, you make movies to connect with audiences and that’s definitely happening, so that’s been beautiful. As much as the movie speaks to parents, it also speaks to young people. We worked on that movie for twelve years, so nothing’s going to take the smile off of my face about that movie.

HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT CHOOSING YOUR ROLES?

It’s probably the most important moment of an actor’s life and it’s probably the one thing you can’t go to school for. How do you choose? As actors were only as good as our opportunities. Which thing is too challenging? Which thing is not challenging enough? I’ve kind of just flown by the seed of my pants for twenty-five or thirty years. Something about my gut lets me know whether or not it would be rewarding for me to try to do. In this particular case, if I didn’t know Michael and Peter, I would have thought the script was too unyielding. The target is very small for this movie. There is a lot of things that can go wrong in telling this story, but I really respect them and think they’re so smart. They’re original. They have this love of 70s genre movies and, in a sort of way, it feels like a throwback, but they’re using it in a modern way and I’m really impressed with them.

For me, this was an easy decision to make. I really believe in Peter and Michael and they’re giving me a really fascinating character and a chance to make an original movie. [Laughs] I mean my wife read the script and she was like “What just happened?” I’m doing this movie! Don’t try and talk me out of it, I love this movie! And, thats how I felt about it. I rarely get the chance to be a part of anything original and, you know, I do a Shakespeare play for a different reason. I basically do that to learn. I just did a movie that is a reimagining of a moment in Chet Baker’s life. So, to get to play a real person presents a different challenge. Sometimes, I’ll read something really good, but I know in my heart that I’m not the right actor for this. There’s another actor. I don’t love this enough. There’d be somebody who would kill to do this. And, sometimes I want to do something and I don’t get the part. It’s been a dance my whole life. Sometimes you do things that you’re worried aren’t going to be good, but you really need to work and sometimes you don’t do something that’s really good because you work too much. I’ve missed some really great opportunities because I was doing a play. I wasn’t available. Had I known it was a choice, I would have chosen the other.

BUT, IT’S ALL PREDESTINED-

[Laughs] It’s all predestined, yes.