Ethan Hawke

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Ethan Hawke has just been nominated for Best Actor Oscar for his starring role playing lyricist Lorenz Hart in the movie Blue Moon. It's his fifth nomination. The others were for supporting actor and for adapted screenplays.

Hawke had other roles in 2025. He starred in the horror film Blackphone 2 as a serial killer who haunts people's dreams, and he starred in the FX series The Lowdown, a loving but humorous take on film noir created by Sterling Harjo, who also directed Hawk in an episode of the popular series Reservation Dogs. The Lowdown has been renewed for a second season. I spoke with Ethan Hawke in November. He had also just completed a new documentary called Highway 99, a double album, about country music star, songwriter, singer, and guitarist Merle Haggard.

That film is expected to be released sometime this year. Hawke was in his early teens when he made his first film, Explorers, co-starring River Phoenix, who was about the same age. Hawke was in his late teens when he co-starred In Dead Poet Society, which starred Robin Williams. Hawke seems to have done it all, a child star who survived the experience intact, an Oscar and Tony nominated actor, a documentary filmmaker, and a novelist.

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