Hawke surpasses 'Gen X' label in 'Before Sunrise'
Actor succeeds in showing diversity, rejects role-model responsibilities
By Lael Loewenstein
Daily Bruin Staff
His movies may have made him a Generation X icon, but Ethan Hawke doesn't want to be anybody's role model.
Through his roles in Dead Poets' Society, Reality Bites, and the current Before Sunrise, Hawke, 25, has come to personify twentysomething angst, but he refuses to be held up as an example.
"It's not my problem to be a role model," Hawke insists. He speaks with a casual air that could easily be mistaken for indifference.
The issue arises in part because in Before Sunrise Hawke's character Jesse has sex with Celine, a woman he has known less than 24 hours. There is no talk of AIDS, pregnancy, or condoms. Hawke shrugs off any notion of social responsibility.
"I think if people are going to run off and have sex they'll do it because they want to, not because our movie told them to," he says. "You can ruin your whole artistic life worrying about being a role model. You've got to be true to yourself."
Being true to himself means that Hawke has selected roles that most interest him, not necessarily those that advance his career. He has chosen films for their challenging subject matter, such as Alive, which depicted the disaster that befell the South American soccer team when their plane crashed in the Andes Mountains.
Other projects have attracted him because he wanted to work with a particular actor, such as Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson in Dad, or Jeremy Irons in Waterland. He has also cultivated a stage career, with parts in repertory theater and an acting group Malaparte, of which he is artistic director.
But his most successful parts so far have been in Dead Poets' Society, and in last year's paean to Generation X, Reality Bites. Because of those two films' popularity, Hawke has been stereotyped as a thoughtful youth at odds with the world around him.
"The whole thing (typecasting) is ridiculous. When I did Dead Poets' Society, people thought I was this really shy, introverted kid, and then I did Reality Bites and they thought I was that person. But all you have to do is keep working and then people give you a different label," he says.
Before Sunrise may help open Hawke up to more adult roles. In it, courting co-star Julie Delpy, he combines the existential despair of his earlier "teen angst" roles with a romantic maturity and deft comic timing.
Because Hawke and Delpy are in just about every frame of the film, Before Sunrise is his most challenging role to date. Comprised of two hours of intense conversation, soul-searching, and character exploration, the film largely hinges on the actors' ability to make Celine and Jesse credible. They succeed, and the result is a fresh and fascinating romance.
But rather than going for a Hollywood-style happy ending, the film concludes on an ambiguous note. Although they plan to meet again, Celine and Jesse go their separate ways. Their reunion is left to our imagination.
"A lot has been said about communication, about how hard it is, and how beautiful it can be, and the idea of seeing your day-to-day life as poetry. For example, the play 'Our Town' is entirely about somebody you don't notice and about how you don't know how beautiful and wonderful your life is until it's gone away," he says.
"That's why the ending I think is so right. It's kind of a metaphor about life. We spend all this time together, we don't know if we're going to meet again, we don't know if it has any meaning or if it's going to amount to anything. That's what the jist of human contact is about and that's a major theme of the movie."
Working on the film was a unique experience because director Richard Linklater worked so closely with his two stars, constantly relying on them to improve the script. Consequently there were very few ego clashes.
"With the three of us working on this script, it was easier for us to get along because if you saw how passionate we all were about the movie, we could never get angry," Hawke recalls. "Everybody wanted it to be good so badly. And Rick was very clear about what he wanted so there was never a possibility for disagreements."
Linklater's laidback style made for a comfortable work environment, in keeping with Hawke's background in theater.
"The trouble with a lot of movies is that they're not a creative process at all. As an actor, you're hired to do what you do. But the nice thing about theater is that immediately you eliminate all the people around who want to make a buck. Everybody who's in the room with you wants to work together on telling a story or putting on a show. And you get that a lot independent film too. I got that in heavy doses on this film."
Of the differences between theater and film he adds, "If all movies were like making this one, then there wouldn't be a difference in the world."
For now, Hawke has no plans for his next project. He may try something lighter, but he isn't losing sleep over his next career move.
"I don't really think about making a particular type of movie. You want to have a nice mix of taking what you do seriously and not taking it too seriously and figuring out that balance. You just want to make a good movie."