Hawke was born in 1970 in Austin, Texas, to charity worker Leslie and insurance actuary James Hawke.
Hawke’s parents met in high school in Fort Worth, Texas, and married when Hawke’s mother was 17. Hawke arrived a year later. At the time of his birth, Hawke’s parents were both students at the University of Texas at Austin. They separated and later divorced when he was four years old, in 1974.
Hawke was raised by his mother after his parents divorced. They moved around a lot before settling in New York City, where Hawke went to Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights. When Hawke was 10, his mother remarried and the family relocated to West Windsor Township, New Jersey. Hawke attended the public West Windsor Plainsboro High School there (renamed to West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South in 1997). He later transferred to Princeton’s Hun School, a secondary boarding school, where he graduated in 1988.
Hawke wanted to be a writer in high school, but he became interested in acting. At the age of 13, he made his stage debut in a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan at The McCarter Theatre. In addition, he appeared in the West Windsor-Plainsboro High School productions of Meet Me in St. Louis and You Can’t Take It with You. He studied acting at the McCarter Theatre on the Princeton campus while at the Hun School. He attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh after graduating from high school but dropped out after being cast in Dead Poets Society (1989). He studied English at New York University for two years before dropping out to pursue other acting roles.
Ethan Hawke’s top movies and TV shows
Hawke and Julie Delpy co-wrote the latter two films in Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, Before Midnight (2013) and Before Sunset (2004), in which Hawke co-starred in. He has lately appeared in the horror movies The Black Phone (2012) and Sinister (2012) by Scott Derrickson (2021).
Ethan Hawke awards and nominations
Hawke has been nominated twice for both the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; his writing contributions to Before Sunset and Before Midnight, as well as his performances in Training Day (2001) and Boyhood (2001), have all received recognition (2014). Both films earned Hawke Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, as well as British Academy Film Award and Golden Globe Award nominations.
