Quotes By Ethan Hawke

You know, I auditioned for 'Titanic.' Sometimes I muse on what would have happened. That would have been such a different life.

There's some kind of actors that can radically change who they are from movie to movie. I've never really been that kind of actor. I enjoy changing the worlds that I'm in.

I'm horrified to admit that I just love Salinger. I was devastated to find out that other people feel the same way.

Some people burn out, and some people like Clint Eastwood, he was a wild, international movie star in his 30s, and he's doing the best work of his life now. Go figure.

The thing that makes a great genre movie is one that's not just entertainment, not just horror or sci-fi or whatever. The ones I love are the genre pictures with some subversive message underlying it all.

Right now, if you're interested in being a dramatic actor, they're not making that many just regular dramas. Movies have to have some other thing going on.

We live in a funny time. If you don't go corporate, you can't compete. You're relegated as irrelevant. People used to admire that.

The girls who like me aren't the ones I like. Or, if I do and they want to commit, I suddenly need tons of time with my friends.

The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit.

The more kind of head trippy sci-fi. I always like that. I was a big 'Twilight Zone' freak.

I think it's my job to risk looking foolish. One of the things I've learned from the actors I've worked with is you don't get something for nothing. If you don't risk looking foolish, you'll never do anything special.

I did one sci-fi movie. I did 'Gattaca.' I liked 'Gattaca' because that was always the kind of science fiction I really dug, the non-action oriented sci-fi.

Right now the only people I can really fall in love with are people who don't really, truly want me around. Now why do I do that?

Nothing teaches you like getting leveled. And I got leveled in my early 30s. Nothing went exactly the way I thought it would.

If you're not a real chameleon of an actor and if you're not one of those guys who can really shape-change themselves all the time, one of the ways to keep pushing yourself and keep changing is to be in different kinds of movies.

It was never in my dreams to make my personal life anybody else's business.

One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.

It is very difficult for any couple who are married if both people are ambitious. I don't know if it's just too hard to be married to a woman that wants to be a movie star.

I kill flies, I eat meat, you know, whatever.

It's difficult to do a genre film well, and it doesn't matter if you're talking vampire movies or 'Dawn of the Dead' or 'The Thing' or 'Escape From New York.' Those kind of movies, they understand what the old-school B-movie is supposed to be, they get the throwback of it.

I always felt that a marriage works best at a farm... where you're together and everybody has clear-cut roles; they have chores, 'you take care of this' and you know. But it's hard.

The theater, for me, has always been a place where I'm free to be more creative, a place to sharpen my tools.

Everyone has to pay their child support, and no matter if you're a Hollywood actor or anyone else, it's always a little bit more than you want to pay.

I was being taken around by a press agent at the Venice Film Festival at age 18. Was it fun? Sure. But it was a dangerous path to be walking on as far as having a substantive life. Because the casualty rate at the Venice Film Festival for 18-year-olds? High.

I think that as soon as you think of yourself as a famous person or anything like that, you're objectifying yourself in some weird way.

I have had so many bad auditions.

In all of our society, but especially in Hollywood, there is an obsession with perfection that can lead to self-loathing and neurosis and all that kind of stuff.

I met a lot of famous people when I was about 24. And none of them seemed very appealing. And so I didn't know why I would struggle to be that kind of person.

In your mid-twenties, the paint is still wet on who you are.

I remember being a kid and sleeping over at my friend's house and staying up late and watching 'Nosferatu.' Vampire movies are supposed to be secret and bad. They should be rated R.