Ethan Hawke (US actor, novelist and director) Add a review

Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an American actor, author, and filmmaker whose career on both stage and screen has spanned four decades. Known for his versatility across a wide range of roles—often in art films—and acclaimed collaborations with director Richard Linklater, he has received numerous accolades, including a Daytime Emmy Award. In addition, he has been nominated for four Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, a British Academy Film Award, and a Tony Award.

Hawke made his film debut at age fourteen in Explorers (1985) and gained recognition for starring in Dead Poets Society (1989). He established himself as a leading man with the films Reality Bites (1994), Gattaca (1997), and Great Expectations (1998). Hawke received Academy Award nominations for his roles in the crime thriller Training Day (2001) and the coming-of-age drama Boyhood (2014), the latter also garnering him BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. He was Oscar-nominated twice for screenwriting two films from the Before trilogy (1995–2013), in which he also starred. He earned another Golden Globe nomination for portraying lyricist Lorenz Hart in the biopic Blue Moon (2025).

Hawke garnered commercial success with Sinister (2012), The Purge (2013), The Magnificent Seven (2016), and the Black Phone films (2021–2025), and was praised for Maudie (2016) and First Reformed (2017). He directed the films Chelsea Walls (2001), The Hottest State (2006), Blaze (2018), and Wildcat (2023), as well as the documentaries Seymour: An Introduction (2014), The Last Movie Stars (2022), and Highway 99: A Double Album (2025). He portrayed abolitionist John Brown in the miniseries The Good Lord Bird (2020), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, and appeared as Arthur Harrow in the Marvel miniseries Moon Knight (2022).

Hawke has appeared in many theater productions. He made his Broadway debut in 1992 in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 2007 for his performance in Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia. In 2010, he was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play for directing Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind. Divorced from actress Uma Thurman, he has been married to Ryan Shawhughes since 2008; he has two children from each marriage, including actors Maya and Levon Hawke.