He has made four previous films with BEFORE SUNSET director Richard Linklater: Before Sunrise, with Julie Delpy; The Newton Boys, with Matthew McConaughey and Skeet Ulrich; Tape and Waking Life, as the voice of Jesse in the animated feature.
Hawke began to study acting at Princeton's prestigious McCarter Theater, eventually landing his first professional job in the theater's performance of St. Joan. In high school Hawke performed in a number of stage productions including the roles of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and Tom in The Glass Menagerie. He studied theater in England with the British Theater Association and at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He performed in the play The Seagull at the National Actors Theater and in Jonathan Marc Sherman's Sophistry. In Chicago, Hawke starred in the Steppenwolf production of Sam Shepard's Buried Child, directed by Gary Sinise.
Shortly after Hawke's performance in Explorers, he landed his first big role as Todd Anderson in Touchstone Picture's Academy Award-winning film Dead Poets Society. He then went on to star opposite Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson in Dad and in the screen adaptation of Jack London's classic Alaskan adventure White Fang, directed by Randal Kleiser. Other films credits include Rich In Love, with Albert Finney; Waterland, with Jeremy Irons; A Midnight Clear; Disney's true life adventure film, Alive and Reality Bites, opposite Winona Ryder
In 1997, Hawke starred opposite Uma Thurman and Jude Law in the sci-fi futuristic thriller Gattaca, which was written and directed by Andrew Niccol, followed soon after by the updated version of the Charles Dickens' classic Great Expectations, co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert De Niro and Scott Hicks' adaptation of David Guterson's best selling novel Snow Falling On Cedars and also appeared in Frank Whaley's Joe The King.
More recently, Hawke starred in Michael Almereyda's wildly imaginative New York depiction of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, alongside Kyle MacLachlan, Sam Shepard, Bill Murray and Diane Venora. In 2001, Hawke's portrayal of Officer Jake Hoyt in Warner Brothers' crime drama Training Day, directed by Antoine Fuqua, earned him nominations for both a SAG award and an Academy Award.
Hawke has also spent time behind the camera. He directed Josh Hamilton in the beautiful short film Straight to One, the story of a couple, young and in love, living in the Chelsea Hotel. The short has been on the festival circuit. Also, Hawke directed the music video Stay for long time friend and former neighbor Lisa Loeb. In 2001, Ethan made his feature film directorial debut with his drama Chelsea Walls. The movie tells five stories set in a single day at the Chelsea Hotel and has a star studded cast which includes Uma Thurman, Kris Kristofferson, Rosario Dawson, Natasha Richardson and Steve Zahn, to name a few. Hawke stars opposite Angelina Jolie in the recent thriller, Taking Lives.
In the fall of 1996, Little Brown published Hawke's first novel, The Hottest State. His second novel Ash Wednesday was published by Knopf in 2002.
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