Actor Ethan Hawke on Joe Rogan Podcast #2425 (Transcript)

I’m 12 years old, right. And afterwards in the parking lot, he said, “Hey, you want to be in a play?” I said, “What do you mean?” He says, “I got a part of a guy who’s a knight. You get to have a sword.” And I said, “Well, do I have any lines?” He said, “You’ll have one line.” I said, “All right, cool.”

And I asked my mom, and she said, “Do I have to pay?” I said, “I don’t think so. I think they’re going to pay me.” So I went and I did this play, and it was George Bernard Shaw’s “St. Joan” at the McCarter Theater in New Jersey.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, it’s a real play.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, it was. It was a proper play. And it was an incredible experience, to be honest with you, because my parents hated their jobs. They would go to work and their life happened on the periphery of their employment. My mom would take the train to New York and so she wouldn’t get home till 7:30 something. She would leave at dawn, and she was just miserable at work.

And I went to this rehearsal and everyone was having… They were talking about whether or not God existed. They were talking about what they believed in. They would dress up in these crazy outfits. And then we did the play. And they got a standing ovation and it was so much fun.

And it was the first time I saw you could do this for a living. A lot of the actors aren’t people you’ve heard of or anything like that, but they were real actors and they loved their job. And the rehearsal room was still kind of thrilling watching them figure out where people should stand and what was important and what was the scene about and what was the theme of the play, and how could this scene fit in with the larger context? And I just decided that’s what I wanted to do.

First Big Break: Hollywood at 14

And a lot of kids want to act, so that doesn’t mean very much. But through this other friend of mine, I started hearing about open casting calls in New York. And I asked my mom if I could go on some of these big auditions. And again, she said, “Is it going to cost me any money?” She said if I paid for my own train fare, I could go to these auditions.

So I took some Polaroids and went on a few of these big auditions, and I got one of them. And it was for this big… In 1984, it was a $30 million movie directed by the guy who’d just done “Gremlins,” right, Joe Dante. And I thought I was a made man. I mean, it was just… It was absolutely incredible to be sucked out of suburban America and brought to LA.

My first scene partner was River Phoenix. And all of a sudden I’m in LA. And my mom couldn’t quit her job or anything, so my mom had a really turbulent relationship with her mother. But her mother said she’d be my guardian. And my mom designed this as a way to maybe have a family healing. But my grandmother was a piece of work, and we lived together in Koreatown. That’s what they called it. And it was wild.

And I remember we drove into Paramount Studios. You can picture it, the image from “The Godfather,” and you had the big gates. And my grandmother had always wanted to be a movie star.

JOE ROGAN: Wow.

ETHAN HAWKE: She was from here. She’s from Austin, Texas. Well, really Fort Worth. But she would talk about going to see “Gone with the Wind” at the Paramount here in Austin. And she would watch “Gone with the Wind” three times a week. And she had dreamed of being a movie star.

And I remember we were in a big van driving me to set the first day, and we went through the gates of Paramount opening up, and she was smoking an Eve cigarette in the van. Of course, it’s 1984. And she’s just like, “My first time in Hollywood as a f*ing guardian.”

And so the whole child actor thing was a trip. And I finished the movie. And there’s a lot of drama involved in the fight was to complete that story, but I finished it. The movie was a big turkey.

JOE ROGAN: How old were you at the time?

The First Failure

ETHAN HAWKE: 14. River and I were both 14. We see… We look so young in that picture, right? But you got to understand, when you’re that age, you think you’re dying to be 18, dying to be 16. We went off… River and I stole a pack of Camel cigarettes because we both wanted to be like James Dean. And we had a lot of fun. That’s the truth.

But the movie came out, and I remember River and I going to the bathroom at the premiere. And we’d grown a lot from the time we shot the movie to the time it came out. And nobody in the bathroom really recognized us. And they were all talking about what a turkey the movie was, how terrible it was.

And I remember just looking in the eyes like it wasn’t the narrative we thought. We had bought into the dream that we were going to be whatever teen icon we were thinking of at the time. And it died a quick and salty death, my dream.

And I went back to high school and put away my dream of being an actor. It seemed like it was this isolated, almost like, choose your own adventure book or something, where I got to see what Hollywood was like, but then have it denied. And it kind of like putting your hand in a flame. It was not a good feeling when it was over.

Dead Poets Society: The Second Chance

And then four years or so went by, and I graduated high school and I was off at college. And I heard about these auditions for a movie called “Dead Poets Society.” And I hated college. I was miserable. And I thought, “I’ll take the bus in and I’ll go on one of these open casting calls again.”

And if I get the part, this is what I decided. If I get the part, I’ll do that. If I don’t get the part, I’ll join the Merchant Marines and be like Jack London. That was my fantasy at the time.

I remember calling my sister and saying, “All right, there’s seven parts. This is how dumb I was. I was like, there’s seven parts. If I don’t get one of those, I must suck.” Which is not true at all. But I ended up getting one of them. And I dropped out of college and the success of “Dead Poets Society” sent me… It was like a trajectory of it shot me down a different course of water than I was on before.

JOE ROGAN: It’s probably a much better path than the first film being successful and you become a child star.

ETHAN HAWKE: I cannot tell you how grateful I am for that first experience. First of all, if for no other reason than in the success of “Dead Poets Society,” I didn’t take it seriously at all. I didn’t even realize that the movie was successful until a couple years later because I had so braced myself for failure, perception of failure anyway.

JOE ROGAN: Because of the first experience.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, because everybody’s saying, “Oh, the movie’s so great.” I’m like, “Yeah. They said this last time doesn’t mean anything.”

And so it kind of taught me at a really young age about to ask yourself why you’re doing something. Like, are you doing it for the result of what happens, or are you doing it to do it? And I, by coming back to acting a few years later, I was just fully braced for it not to go well and it was still going to be worth it. And so I think it gave me slight bit of ballast to handle the success of “Dead Poets Society.”

JOE ROGAN: You went into it for the enjoyment of doing it, rather than thinking…

Learning from Masters

ETHAN HAWKE: I just hadn’t… I had no expectations, but I was certain I wasn’t going to be a star. I was positive of it. I saw it as a way to make some money and maybe learn about writing and learn about film and a way to get out of college.

Now, what happened is, when I got there, I met all these other young men who were in love with acting and that I started watching movies with them and talking about movies with them and seeing the light in their eyes. And we’d go to set and there was Robin Williams.

We had Peter Weir, who had just directed “Witness,” one of my favorite movies of all time at that point. And he was a master. I mean, he was not a lightweight human being. He was a heavyweight human being. And he would lead rehearsals and he would talk about acting and performance in a way that I hadn’t…

Well, I heard people talk about it that way when we were doing “St. Joan,” when I was doing the… Like, he talked about it like we were making art and like we were on a mission beyond success or failure. And it was an invitation to a lifestyle, a life commitment.

And what I didn’t realize at the time, that’s what that movie’s about, too. So the movie itself is a guided meditation on “carpe diem.”

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s a meditation on “gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” “I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.” This is kind of stuff that I was getting inundated with in rehearsal. And so that was… I didn’t… I wouldn’t have told you that on the day I wrapped “Dead Poets Society” that my life had changed. But looking back, it had.

JOE ROGAN: It had planted the seeds.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah.

The Dangers of Early Fame

JOE ROGAN: I was thinking, I’ve never met a person who became famous at 14 who came out of it okay. Jodie Foster School never met anybody that became famous very young.

ETHAN HAWKE: I read every interview she does for exactly that reason. I have… It’s so difficult. I tell parents all the time, like children, acting is a wonderful thing. Put them in the school play. It’s so good for them. Get them singing lessons. It’s so good for them. Singing, the church choir, it’s so good for them.

But to be a professional actor at a young age is… It’s dangerous and in extremely insidious ways that are very, very hard to perceive when it’s happening. That’s a great way to put it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I think it completely impedes your developmental process. The way I liken to is like concrete. When you make concrete, there’s a bunch of very specific ingredients. You put them with very specific mixture. Like, you have to have this amount of water, that amount of sand, this amount of rocks. If it’s off, it’s never fixed. You can’t add water after it’s cured, it’s done. It’s f*ed forever. This is bad concrete now. And this is what happens to a lot of young human beings that become famous, whether it’s through acting or singing.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah. And it’s not just fame. That analogy works for all walks alike. If you have a really… Something really traumatic happens in childhood, it’s very hard to recover. It’s a tremendous amount of work to recover.

And I agree with you. Like, I think celebrity is like… It’s like a tiny drop of mercury or it’s poison. It’s poison for your brain. Now, if you’re mature, you can handle it. And if you get it in slow… Like, I got it in slow increments. “Dead Poets Society” happened. I had a little taste of fame, but I wasn’t… Nobody knew my name. I was…

JOE ROGAN: You go to restaurants?

The Slow Build of Fame

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, it was that kid from “Dead Poets Society.” Oh, look at him. Yeah. And I got it in slow. I got to develop. What do you call it when you get a little bit of poison?

JOE ROGAN: Like a resistance.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, resistance to it. And it came so slowly for me. I even think about people. I remember the weekend “Pretty Woman” came out. Two days before, no one had ever heard of Julia Roberts. Two days afterwards, she’s the most famous woman in America. I think that’s a huge thing to absorb. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. And I know that my personality couldn’t have handled it. I’ve worked hard to handle it as poorly or well as I have.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I think you going back to school and living a normal life for five, six years or whatever it was before you left college, I just think that’s critical. That’s the developmental process of the normal maturation of a person. When they go through adolescence, teenage years, into college, young adult, then you can kind of handle things. And then maybe you’re also fortunate that, like you said, “Dead Poets Society,” not, you know, you didn’t get too huge from it. You just got some juice.

ETHAN HAWKE: A little bit of juice, a little bit of confidence. That was nice.

JOE ROGAN: It’s like something’s happening.

ETHAN HAWKE: Something’s happening. But then I had the years after that. I have to give a shout out to my mom, who was just so devastated that I dropped out of college. I mean, she just couldn’t stop crying about it. And it filled me with desire to show her that I was taking responsibility for my own education, which is what I said I would do.

And so I started a theater company, and I worked really hard at a lot of different things. Writing and reading and thinking, and mostly with this theater company where I met a lot of young people who were interested in what I was doing, but we weren’t paid any money, and we worked our asses off and we built sets. It was fun. I don’t want to lie. We had a great time.

But it was a college experience that I gave myself through this theater company. And that changed me because I met a lot of people who were really excellent at what I do, that weren’t making a lot of money, met a lot of people who loved it as much as I do, who weren’t getting their picture taken, who weren’t being told they were special. I knew how gifted they were. I could understand. I had a little bit of balance and a little bit of humility to go along with the superficial elements of my chosen field.

Pivotal Moments and Guardian Angels

JOE ROGAN: Do you ever think about, like, what would have happened if that guy didn’t invite you to do that play when you were 12? Kind of crazy how there’s these pivotal moments in your life.

ETHAN HAWKE: He just died. Nagel Jackson was his name. And he was a great theater director. I mean, I don’t know if you feel this way. I have a sense often, and I know this just sounds really dopey to say, but I sometimes have a sense of a guardian angel of some kind. Why did this guy talk to me in the parking lot? And why was he such a kind, decent human being?

Throughout my life, I have had opportunities presented to me. And I had enough intuition and enough intelligence maybe to follow it. But I do think about it all the time. All the ways that are imperceptible on the Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday that they happen, but where your life is kind of guided. And it doesn’t really feel by your own doing.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I know it sounds wacky to say, but I believe it, too. I mean, I don’t publicly profess it as the definite reason why everything happens, but there’s a bunch of… I think most people that have gotten anywhere in life, there’s moments in their life, how did that happen? Like, why did this feel like it was a destined path? Like, why was I compelled to try this? What was the thought behind that? And am I being guided? Is fate real?

ETHAN HAWKE: I wonder how other people feel. But I do think one of the keys… I think that probably everybody has a path that is there for them. And the trick about knowing yourself, the value and taking time to be still with yourself and listen to yourself.

There’s an expression. The voice of our spirit is extremely gentle. It’s difficult to hear it. It’s quiet. But if you can hear it, that thing, intuition, that thing, the path idea of a guardian angel, whatever, you can see what’s happening around you if you’re in touch with yourself.

And if you’re not in touch with yourself, you keep tripping on the same… You’re not seeing the angles and the roads that might be available to you. So I do think that part of the trick is taking time to actually get to know yourself. So that you can see the light when it appears. Because I bet you everybody has it.

JOE ROGAN: I bet they do, too. I bet there’s also a real factor in recognizing the misery of your mother’s life. What she was doing, where she didn’t take these chances. She didn’t. She had responsibility.

ETHAN HAWKE: She was. Yeah. But can I tell you something funny about that?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

A Mother’s Second Act

ETHAN HAWKE: So she was 18 when I was born. Right. So that’s tough. You don’t really have a childhood. Right?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: But in her mid-40s she took it. She joined the Peace Corps in her mid-40s after, once I was okay and it was right around the time my oldest, Maya was born.

JOE ROGAN: Are you a single child?

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I was a big part of her, on her brain a lot worrying. It was a big, is this kid going to be all right? Is this kid going to be all right? It makes a lot of noise in your head.

JOE ROGAN: Sure.

ETHAN HAWKE: And I was all right. And she looked around and I remember her saying that if an accident happened today, when they do happen and I died, I would be extremely disappointed in myself. She was probably, I don’t know, 46 or something when she said this. Younger than I am now.

And she said, I don’t want to be disappointed in my life. So she joined the Peace Corps, which she wasn’t all that impressed with, but they sent her to Romania, and she fell in love with Romania, and she fell in love with the people there. And she got obsessed with the racism against the gypsy culture, the Roma culture, I’m supposed to call it.

And it reminded her a lot of growing up here in the 60s and the racism she saw as a young girl. And she just decided to do something about it. She spent 25 years there, and she got thousands of kids into school who wouldn’t have gone to school. She just recently retired back to Fort Worth.

And she’s a different woman than the woman I grew up with, which is, I think, a remarkable story. I love both the women. The woman now and the woman I grew up with. I don’t want to paint some portrait that she was miserable. She had so much. She just was miserable at work.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: She was not a miserable person to be with. The opposite. And she kept that fire in herself alive enough to, when the window presented itself, she took it, and she took it hard. I mean, she disappeared for a quarter of a century to Romania. The young woman born in Fort Worth. Right.

And that’s a wild thing to do, and she made a huge impact, and I’m extremely proud of her and proud of the work that she’s done, and so is everybody who knows her. And now she’s in Fort Worth doing her thing and has a different sense of herself because she followed her own intuition and her own path.

JOE ROGAN: She had to deal with the responsibility of raising a child for a long time.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Well, that develops a different kind of character, too. The character of a woman trying to raise a child and also a boy. I have all daughters.

ETHAN HAWKE: You do? I have three daughters and one boy. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: All my friends are boys. Like, dude, it is so much harder. It’s just you just trying to keep them from burning the house down.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah. It was a pain, of course.

JOE ROGAN: And if you’re a single child… But she must have gotten some inspiration from your path, from your choices.

ETHAN HAWKE: I wonder. I have to ask her. I think she had, in her own way, went for it because everybody told her not to have a baby, and she wanted to, and she didn’t want to run with the pack now. She didn’t. I don’t think when you’re 18, you don’t understand the ramifications of the decision of having a child.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: You know how permanent. I remember she told me when Maya was born, well, congratulations, you now have something to worry about the rest of your life.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I think it’s a gift, though. I mean, I certainly think it changes you as a human being in, in my case, the most positive ways possible. I could imagine being a single mother, though, it’s a much more difficult position to be in and there’s a lot…

ETHAN HAWKE: Of pressure on women. If you work, you’re a bad mother. If you’re just a stay at home mom, you’re not a good, strong woman. I mean, they’re damned if they do, they’re damned if they don’t. That’s the position they get put in.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah.

Drawing From Life Experience

JOE ROGAN: It’s all those experiences when as an actor, I mean, one of the more fascinating things to me about watching people is how they can assume different identities. And how critical is it to have had so many different people in your life and different life experiences to draw from, to try to understand things through their eyes.

If you’re a regular person running through… If you’re a stockbroker, you’re running through the world thinking like a stockbroker. You’re not thinking, what would it be like to be a janitor? What is it like to be this guy who’s trying to raise a family and he’s got a drug dealer in his neighborhood that’s causing problems. And your life is this constant state of drama.

Like you’re drawing from all these different experiences. So having had, like, not… I mean, I wouldn’t say your life was complicated, but it sounds like you have a really good mom, but complicated and not necessarily that stable in that way. You’re young and you’re trying this thing out and you’re going off to Hollywood and then you’re coming back and going to college.

Having all these different bizarre interactions with people in life experience. How much do you draw upon that when you’re trying to create a character?

ETHAN HAWKE: Well, that’s a really big question. Well, I still have to break it into parts.

JOE ROGAN: It started getting bigger as I was asking.

Drawing on Characters and the Actor’s Journey

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, yeah. Because it’s kind of two parts. But the first part about drawing on a character is touching on my favorite aspect of my life and my job. Most people, if you’re an actuary, you’re an actuary. You think in numbers. You think in this. And it’s your job. You have to.

Yeah, you know, I have, I got to play a World War II vet. Got taken out to basic training. I got to read World War II veterans’ journals over and over again. I got to wear the clothes they wore. I was working that movie for a few months, reading all kinds of books, watching documentaries about that. Then that movie’s over.

JOE ROGAN: Moving on.

ETHAN HAWKE: Now I’m going to get cast as an LA cop. Going to do ride arounds through Los Angeles in the backseat of a cop car right when the crash unit thing was happening. And I’m thinking like a cop. And I’m not, it’s not, it’s even, it’s different than being a journalist and writing about it. I’m really trying to imagine being them. And I’m not looking at it from a judgmental point of view. I don’t have an agenda about whether they’re a good person or a bad person or whether this army sergeant should have made that decision or that. When I’m thinking, why did he make it? Why did he make it? Why did he do that?

JOE ROGAN: Right?

ETHAN HAWKE: I play a jazz musician, a drug addict. I’m not sitting there judging him. What a bad person. You know, I’m thinking, why did he do it? You know, it’s a painkiller. Why is he taking it? Where’s this music come from? Why is it so important to him? Why does he practice 12 hours a day? What is that about?

You know, all these characters are these invitations to expand your own sense of what identity means. Like, what is, who is Joe Rogan? Right. And who Joe Rogan is with his mom is a little different than he’s watching the Super Bowl with his best friends. Who Joe Rogan is at 40 is different than he is at 20. We have inside of us so many aspects to ourselves.

You know, when in love, you change. When you see your child for the first time, you change. Your biology, your chemicals start to shift a little bit. If you’re in a violent situation, your molecular structure alters a little bit, and you start to realize that that’s not you and that’s not you, and that’s not you. They’re all you. And that’s what performing is like.

And you start to see society and see yourself and see a continuity that is really kind of exciting. I’ve had, if you don’t get ruined by, oh, breaking your arm, patting yourself on the back or something like that. I’ve met a bunch of older actors who’ve lived really interesting lives that I’ve learned. It’s like I once had dinner with Vanessa Redgrave, this old English actress. She spent her life doing Shakespeare and Chekhov and Beckett and Tennessee Williams. She spent her life with some of the greatest minds of the last 50 years. And she carries that with her.

She’s powerfully intelligent and powerfully humble woman. And it’s like being next to somebody you really admire. You know, a master craftsman, doesn’t matter what the craft is. When they, when you take it to a high level, it has a lot to teach you.

Staying Balanced: The Importance of Grounded Values

So anyway, that was a multi-part question. The other thing, that part of your question is how did I stay balanced? And a lot of it had to do with my father who has, he doesn’t care about celebrity. He doesn’t particularly think it’s very interesting. Not in a judgmental way. Really cares about integrity and whether you’re a good person and whether you tell the truth. And it doesn’t, it’s not interesting to him how much money you make. That’s not where his value system is placed on whether he’s naturally suspicious of people who want too much attention. Naturally suspicious of that in me, which was good for me.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a good suspicion.

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s a healthy suspicion. Yeah, he was very realistic about the chances I had of making a profession out of this. That’s not a bad thing. You know, everybody says it’s so great to tell people to follow your dreams. And it is important to follow your dreams, but it’s also important to be realistic and have a plan and take care of yourself. And when you say you’re going to do something, to do it, to show up when you’re asked to tell the truth, all these things that.

So whenever things would start to go well, I had this person in my life that’s very important to me who doesn’t place a value on anything superficial. And when we talked about why it’s so hard to meet young people in this profession who make it, what starts to happen regardless of how good or not good your parents are or something, your circle can get infiltrated with a lot of people trying to make money off you. And that’s dangerous because they don’t care about you.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that is an issue. There’s an issue of people trying to get you to take work that you really shouldn’t take just because they’re going to get a percentage of it or it’s…

ETHAN HAWKE: Going to be good for you in the next three years, but they don’t have your long term. What is going to be good for the 65-year-old version of you, you know? Is this like you said? Yeah. If I could have decided my life explorer, it would have been E.T., Big, and you know what? I wouldn’t be here on this talk show today, you know. So I don’t want to be in charge of my whole life in that way.

JOE ROGAN: You know, maybe you would, but it would be different. You’d be coming out of rehab.

ETHAN HAWKE: Oh, for sure.

JOE ROGAN: It’d be a Charlie Sheen story.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah. Dude, I’d be on marriage 18.

JOE ROGAN: Who, by the way, was a fantastic guy to talk to.

ETHAN HAWKE: I bet he was. Yeah, I listened to it. It was fantastic.

JOE ROGAN: Wonderful guy, like a sweetheart of a guy. A guy who went through the exact opposite of what I’m saying is good for you.

ETHAN HAWKE: If you survive.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

Wisdom Through Adversity

ETHAN HAWKE: Anything is a learning tool, right? I mean, some of you, you must have this. Some of the wisest people I know have been through the 12-step program.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

ETHAN HAWKE: And so addiction and misery can be an unbelievable teacher. If you can, if you pull yourself out of it.

JOE ROGAN: If you survive.

ETHAN HAWKE: If you survive. It’s not, I wouldn’t wish it for my children. It’s not a dare I want them to take. Oh, hey. One path to wisdom. Yeah. A lot of my friends died from it, but a couple of them are really wise from it. Read a book. Okay.

I remember, it’s funny, even as you said. I remember when I was about 24, starting to get successful, I met my friend Richard Linklater, and we were hanging out in New York, and we met this really cool, this guy we really admired. Fancy pants writer, really badass. You know, you kind of just. And we were smoking cigarettes. Well, Rick wasn’t, of course, but we were shooting pool, and this guy said to me, “You know what? You’re almost interesting.” He said to me, “You know, what you got to do is you got to go down to Mexico and disappear for a couple years. You know, live life a little bit. Then you’ll be somebody.”

And the guy, finally, when the night we’re walking home with Rick, and Rick said, “Let me tell you what you don’t need to do. What do you do? Read some William Burroughs. That might be a good idea. Read some Hunter S. Thompson. Skip the addiction path. You know, learn what you don’t have to. You don’t have to do it. You know, you don’t need to. That’s not the path to wisdom.”

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: You know, it has worked for a handful of people, but most of us. You know, I keep coming back in this conversation with Jodie Foster, how much I read her interviews because I admire, because I know what she survived.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: But, but she’s wicked smart. Yes. You know, you don’t want to, you don’t want to place your bet that you’re as smart as she is.

Jodie Foster: A Rare Success Story

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, she’s smart and also wise. That’s the odd thing of someone who’s in like, how old was she in Taxi Driver?

ETHAN HAWKE: 12, 14. Crazy.

JOE ROGAN: Crazy. And it’s a very bizarre movie for a young child to be sexualized and in this very weird psychotic movie.

ETHAN HAWKE: But what she took from it was this great mentor, Martin Scorsese, and she kind of understood she was making art. That’s where the wisdom comes in. She’s just naturally precociously wise that way that she didn’t get hung up on the seedy aspects, the sexuality aspects of it. She got hung up on, who’s this guy Martin Scorsese? What is he doing? What is this movie saying? How could I be a part of that? And that’s how I think she survived. But I don’t know the woman, so I shouldn’t speak.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I don’t know her either. But I do admire her when I hear her talk.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, me too.

JOE ROGAN: That’s why I always bring her up as the lone example that I’ve ever come across of someone who’s been through childhood stardom that seems to be very well and put together.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah. And she’s still really good at her job.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, right, right.

Finding Role Models: Jeff Bridges and the Long Game

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s like that’s a career that to me is really exciting, you know. See, if you’re me, you’re like, I look at Jeff Bridges a lot too. So like when Dead Poets Society came out, I remember I went on this long talk with myself. I was like, sunrise and I’d been up all night. It was in New York, I was about 19 or something. And I was just thinking about who had gone through this that I actually admire when I look at them.

And I admire, Jeff Bridges had starred in The Last Picture Show, which was one of my favorite movies. And he was amazing at it. And he just slowly got better and better and better and better. And I was like, alright, so it can be done. You know this. You know, he’s got an amazing wife, he’s really super into Buddhism. I started getting like, what, what is, he’s really into photography. Like he takes, I don’t know him either. Right. So I’m just, I’m just, I’m talking like a fan here. It’s not, I don’t know these people.

But I, I watched him from afar. It’s like, okay, this race can be won. And I’ve always thought, I remember I was so happy he won the Academy Award for True Grit, I guess it was. And I was like, d*mn, what a long, slow burn he had. And he just keeps getting better and more interesting. He comes out with these weird little books I love, and I read them.

JOE ROGAN: He writes books?

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, he has this book with his, like, he has a mentor in Buddhism, and they kind of wrote a book together about the Tao of the Dude or something like that. But it’s actually, you know, I don’t know if you’ve read the Tao of Pooh. I love all these kind of…

JOE ROGAN: To.

ETHAN HAWKE: The left versions of. Sometimes I find it hard to read the, I want to read what Pooh thinks about the Dhammapada more than I want to read the Dhammapada myself. Yeah, there it is. Yeah. The Dude and the Zen Master. It’s a great book, by the way. He has a mantra in it that I just love, which is, “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”

And he talks about how valuable that song has been to him. I’m probably misquoting, but it meant a lot to me. And it’s just like, one step at a time, one step at a time. Keep, keep a smile on your face, you know, don’t forget it’s all a dream, you know, it’s like, it’s a great mantra.

JOE ROGAN: It is. And it’s always great to have someone who has gone through it all and has come out fascinating, interesting, and wise. So you go, it can be done.

ETHAN HAWKE: Did you ever meet Kris Kristofferson?

JOE ROGAN: No.

ETHAN HAWKE: He was cool.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

The Art of Mentorship and Heroes

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah. Well, my secret fantasy is your job. You know, I wrote a profile on Chris, I don’t know, 15 years ago now for Rolling Stone magazine, and I made a documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and I just finished a documentary about Merle Haggard. And I really enjoy studying other people.

But Chris, you know, his life story, you know it all. I mean, he was in the military, and then he gave up everything, became a songwriter. And it’s kind of like, imagine if, you know, the equivalent is, like, at the point of height of his career. It’s like imagining if Brad Pitt had also written a number one single for Amy Winehouse. And, you know what I mean? I mean, you know, he wrote “Me and Bobby McGee” for Janis Joplin.

JOE ROGAN: He did? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: And he was, you know, a helicopter pilot and he wrote songs for Johnny Cash and he was acting in Sam Peckinpah movies.

JOE ROGAN: He was in Blade?

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, he was in Blade, but he was a real. He’s a Rhodes scholar and a boxer. You would like this guy. He would be right up your alley. A real free thinker and didn’t trap himself in any way of thinking and really fought for individual rights. And he was a great, great guy.

Got to interview him and he actually starred in my first movie I directed too, so I got to know him.

JOE ROGAN: What was that movie called?

ETHAN HAWKE: Chelsea Walls. I don’t necessarily recommend you watch it. You can if you want to. I learned a lot making it. I like it a lot. But I was learning, you know, I was learning a lot. But Chris was in it and he was amazing. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Having known people like that is so beneficial in your life that they’re not just like inspirational. It’s like a mental fuel type of a type of nutrient almost. It’s like having a person that you know exists, that’s been through something, has come out amazing and is so not tied down to anyone’s specific identity, has varied interests, pursues them all with passion.

ETHAN HAWKE: Having mentors.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s like, you know, how are you going to be a samurai if you don’t know a samurai? You know, and you got to see the way they tie their shoes. You got to see the way they make dinner. You don’t just get to see the fancy sword play. That stuff is hard earned.

And so I’m not scared of that. You don’t have to hero worship people. You don’t have to turn them into deities. They’re human beings. But when you get to experience and see that people like, oh, you don’t have to lie. I knew a guy once who didn’t lie. You don’t have to back down when somebody says that. I watch the person not back. You can be a good parent. You can have your children say, I love my dad. It’s not going to come easy, but it can be done.

And so I like heroes. I have no. I also like seeing older people, you know, not the fixation on the 23 year old James Dean, you know, but a fixation on, you know, the 72 year old Kris Kristofferson, you know, you know, pick whoever yours are. There’s, you know, Muhammad Ali. I mean, there’s so many amazing people that you can say like, wow, life was not always a picnic for them. How did they handle it? And then you cannot be, you know, too upset when life’s not a picnic for you, you can just ask yourself, how did you handle it?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with really appreciating people. That concern of hero worship is legitimate because I think there are some people that will take a person and change who they are and make them not just extraordinary, but not even human.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, that’s a mistake.

JOE ROGAN: It is a mistake. But it doesn’t mean you can’t love and deeply appreciate who they actually are, flaws and all, because that’s what we all are. And when someone is extraordinary and they have gone through so much or they have expressed so much and they do resonate with you so much, that’s a valuable person, and you should treat them like they’re a valuable person. It’s not necessarily hero worship. It’s just appreciation.

The Chelsea Walls Story

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah. Like I’ll tell you. I don’t know why I just flashed through my brain and when I was making this film, Chelsea Walls, you have to understand, like, digital video. It just came out, this movie, the Celebrations. Danish film. Amazing movie. Thomas Vinterberg directed it, and it just kind of changed the rules. The camera was cheap.

Like, movies were always so expensive to make, and now you could just. I was like, all right, I want. I made this movie for $100,000 in 2000. And I was like, all right, we’re just going to play with this new camera. And I talked Kris Kristofferson into being it. He was my hero, and he can’t. He agreed to do it. I couldn’t believe it.

You know, he shows up on the set, and I had this elaborate shot I had planned. I’d found this apartment that was amazing. I hope this isn’t boring, but I think it’s a funny story. So it’s my first day with Chris, and I’m really trying to impress him. Like, I’ve ripped this shot off from this French film I’ve seen. It’s amazing.

You’re going to come into. You’re going to. His character orders a bottle of whiskey, and the guy delivers a bottle of whiskey to the room. And in my idea, from this apartment, you could. From the living room into the bedroom, and from the bedroom to the bathroom, and then out of the bathroom into the kitchen, and the kitchen opened back up into the living room. It was one of those New York City Square apartments in the Chelsea Hotel. Right.

And I showed him this path I wanted to take, and he was going to turn on the lights in this room, and he was going to put on a cowboy hat. While he’s talking on the phone, he’s going to look in the mirror and point the thing, and he’s going to walk in the bathroom and flick that light on and then slam the mirror shut and then walk out and then sit down in the kitchen right where he was, pop open the whiskey and pour himself a glass right as he says the last line of the monologue.

And he looks at me and he goes, are you an alcoholic? And I was like, no, no, not really.

JOE ROGAN: No.

ETHAN HAWKE: He goes, I’m an alcoholic. I said, oh, okay. His character’s name was Bud. He says, Bud’s an alcoholic? Yeah. He goes, so you mean to tell me I ordered a bottle of whiskey, I’m about to fall off the wagon, and I don’t open the f*er until I walk through this room, turn on a light, try on a cowboy hat, flip on a light, slam a mirror, and then sit down?

I was like, well, I think it would be a great shot. And he’s like, Ethan, there’s no way in hell that I can remember all those lines and do all that that you’re asking me. That shot will never work. So what I think is Bud’s an alcoholic, and he’s going to get his bottle, he’s going to open it, I’m going to sit down, say my monologue and drink. Okay, great, let’s do that.

JOE ROGAN: There’s also the terror of someone you deeply admire not liking your idea.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah. Which is your whole body just shrivels up, you know, you didn’t see the guitar film. I don’t give a s* about the Godard film. There’s no way I’m going to remember those lines.

But then to finish it, I’ll say, when he wrapped the movie, he was getting. He said his goodbyes and everything. He was getting in the elevator to leave, and I ran out and I said to him, I said, hey, listen, you know, you’ve given so much this whole project, and I know that, but, you know, this whole crew’s working for free, right? And could I beg you, would you come in and sing one song for us? Just like. Just for the crew, for me? Is there any way you’d do that?

And he said, yeah, you got a guitar? I said, I do. I do. He sat down and he proceeded to tell this elaborate story that I’m sure he’s told a thousand times, but it was such a gift, the room. He sat and told his story about how he met Janis Joplin in the elevator of this very building. And we and she f*ed me about four minutes later. And I played her this song.

And he’s “Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train, I was feeling about his fate.” The whole crew, everybody’s crying, everybody’s so happy. I mean, he was just. He was that giving, you know, to everybody and understood what it would mean to this group of young artists, you know, and so. But he wasn’t perfect, you know, he was a real dude with real issues and, you know, and I loved him.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, he was. I mean, you think about what he did and all the different songs that he performed and movies he was in and different things that he did. That was an extraordinary life.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, I’ll stop in one second, but I think you’ll love this. Apparently, the legend Johnny Cash used to say that. You know that song? “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” “I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt. And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad, so I had one more for dessert.” Great song. Okay, so.

So Johnny Cash had a number one single out of this song. And Johnny Cash would tell the story how Chris was flying helicopters, offshore oil, and he landed in Johnny Cash’s front yard with a beer in one hand and the song in the other on his helicopter and said, damn it, you got to listen to my song. And I listened to it and went straight to number one. That’s the story that, you know, Cash would tell.

And I asked Chris about it, and he said, have you ever flown a such and such chopper? I said, no, I haven’t. He goes, there ain’t no way in hell you can fly that thing with beer in one hand and a cassette in the other. That story, I don’t know where he came up with that story. He’s just trying to help out my career and make a legend out of me, too. But no, no, I just sent it to him via airmail.

The Hypnosis of Great Acting

JOE ROGAN: For a person that watches movies, I’ve done a small amount of acting, but I’m not good at it. For a person who watches movies, there’s a thing that happens, like a hypnosis when someone is a really good actor, where they become that person.

And even though I know it’s Ethan Hawke, I know it’s fill in the blank, Daniel Day Lewis, I know who it is, but it’s not them at this moment. They’re so good that they’ve convinced me that they’re this other person. What is that?

Because there are moments where I see a good actor and I say, I don’t believe them. I don’t. I think they’re phoning it in. They’re saying it the right way, but there’s just something in the air. There’s a missing connection. And it is the key to a great movie. The key to a great movie is everybody has to be in that f*ing weird zone. That weird zone where you become a different person.

ETHAN HAWKE: You used the essential word in your first sentence, which is hypnosis. I’ve spent my life studying what you just talked about. And when you’re acting with Denzel Washington, the power and strength and completeness of his imagination is hypnotizing, and it’s an invitation to join him.

And a great film is a collective imaginative experience. When you watch the Godfather, you’re not f*ing thinking about Al Pacino or James Caan or you think about Michael and Sonny and Tom and, you know, Vito and I remember I watched Godfather, I felt like I’d see those guys at the Nick game tomorrow. That’s how we. That’s how much you’re not thinking about the music. You’re not thinking about the shots. You know, it’s all one thing.

All these disparate elements turn into one fist. You cannot do it alone. Right. But the best people I’ve worked with, it’s like the easiest example to show it, like, for anybody. When you go to a concert, every now and then, it happens. The performer hypnotizes you, and you disappear.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: You’re inside those songs.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

The Art of Disappearing

You know, you’re not talking about those songs. You’re not listening. You are inside the song. You’re inside a dream.

And bad acting, for me, is glib. Bad acting is commenting on the song. Bad acting is slightly… The feeling you’re talking about is when somebody’s slightly outside of it. It’s very, very hard. And a lot of people study it and work on it, and voice and speech is a huge… I mean, this stuff is very… It’s way more interesting to me than it would be to our audience here today.

But it’s like all these elements of what creates hypnosis. If we’re talking about the violin, there are ways to practice the violin. And I’m not going to make somebody a virtuoso, but I can, if I’m an expert violin pitch, help you be better. And I think the same is true for acting.

Acting is an art form. It’s beautiful. It’s some weird collage of where performance and writing and all these elements, music… It’s all a part of it. And when it’s happening, it’s all effortless. And there’s a lot of work you can do to inch it to being easier and to inch your scene partner to being easier. And there are ways that they can help you and there’s ways that they can ruin it. They can break the dream.

But when it’s good, it is like diving into a dream. And it’s a feeling that I got for the first time when I was 18 years old acting in “Dead Poets Society.” And it was a feeling, it was seconds long. I mean, it was not much, but a feeling of disappearing.

And that’s the irony, I always feel about acting is that, you know, people think about actors and they see these pictures on the red carpet or something. They think that’s what acting is, you know, what it really is. It’s a life that’s completely antithetical to that of trying to disappear. It feels like the celebration of the self, the celebration of the personality.

But when you’re doing a scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman, you know, it’s not Phil that’s talking to you. You know, it’s like, you know, in the cartoon when the eyes go all squirrely and like… And then all of a sudden I’m not me. And if I’ve done my work right, all of a sudden I’m saying, what’s coming out of my mouth is what I prepared. What’s coming out of my pocket is what I prepared. The way I’m moving is what I’m prepared. Because… And I’m not thinking about it.

It’s like watching a great athlete. When a great athlete makes a behind the back pass to the guy at the perfect second, he’s not thinking, “Oh, I’ve got a cool idea, I’m going to throw it behind my back and catch him right as he’s in stride.” It’s years of practice that have let them know that I know where he is. Because where else would he be, you know? And things that are at first difficult become easy. And then you can even get better from there and get better from there.

Method Acting and Finding Your Truth

But that’s the difference people talk about. You know, I love Daniel Day-Lewis too. I think he’s kind of the high water mark of my trade. And, you know, you hear these stories about what he does and people say, “Well, is that what you’re supposed to do?”

And the thing about when people say method acting is they really don’t fundamentally understand what the method is. The method is an invitation to find out for yourself. What will unlock your imagination? And that might be going hungry for two weeks. That might be sleeping in a jail cell. It might be reading 25 books about it. It might be wearing a weird headpiece. It’s not a rule. It’s about how to unlock what’s in here and bring it forward. That’s what the greats do.

JOE ROGAN: And find that zone. And when you’re watching a movie, it does the exact same feeling like I’m there with you. Whatever you’re experiencing when you are in that zone and you really are that person. I am not just saying, “Oh, he really is that person.” I’m with you. I’m with you in the moment. I feel your anxiety.

The scene in the… God damn it, I forgot the name of it. The film you did with Julia Roberts. The dystopian end of civilization movie.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, exactly. Now that you said it, it went out of my head too.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a great movie. All the Teslas crash.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah. With Mahershala. And “Leave the World Behind.” Thank you. That’s embarrassing for me. I’m supposed to know. But when you said you couldn’t remember it, then all of a sudden it went out of my mind.

JOE ROGAN: It’s less embarrassing for me now that you didn’t remember it. Sounds like s*, I got to remember the name. The scene where you go up to the guy’s house and he pulls a gun on you.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I’m right there with you. I’m like, “Oh, s*.” It was a great scene.

ETHAN HAWKE: It was Kevin Bacon. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Phenomenal performance. Because I fing believed you. I believed him. I believed you. I believed it was happening. And I was like, “Oh, s.” It was “oh s*.” It wasn’t like these guys are acting.

ETHAN HAWKE: That seems exactly what I’m talking about.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: Because that’s Mahershala Ali, Kevin Bacon and myself in a very well written scene. And those two guys are so easy to act with. They are so… It is so easy to disappear with them. We did that scene over and over and over again 15,000 different ways and blah, blah. And it was always… I always loved it.

And you know, I did… I had a temper tantrum that day on set, but I… Because your body, you’re winding your body up in such a way that it’s like an emotional currency or something. You have this thing you’re going to spend, but you have… Your body doesn’t know it’s fake.

And if you do it right, you trick your body into believing that I’m begging for my child’s life. I’m not acting, I’m begging Kevin Bacon for my child’s life. And he’s going to decide whether or not my child gets to live, right? And if you can get that going, s* starts to happen to you, right? Things you don’t plan.

And if Kevin is good, which he is, if Mahershala is good, then they’re doing the same thing, right? He’s… If he gives me this thing that I need, he’s putting his wife at risk. He’s not going to do it. I don’t care about your kid, you know, and then Mahershala’s got his character in his head and then all of a sudden people are actually behaving. They’re not reciting lines, they’re not…

Lessons from a Wolf

It’s like I did one of my earlier movies with a wolf, right? It was the best acting teacher I ever had, this wolf. Because there was this movie called “White Fang,” right? Little Disney kids movie, right? But it was a great teacher because I had to do these scenes with this half-breed wolf.

And if I’m, if you’re the wolf, all right, and we’re doing a scene together and what I’m really thinking about is the camera, you know, the wolf turns around, looks at the camera, you know, when you meet somebody and you know they’re self-conscious, right? You know why she’s so tense? You don’t, you just… We’re non-verbal, we can communicate with each other.

Animals pick up on it instantly. If I’m actually talking to the dog, the wolf, if I’m actually in, if I’m present with this animal, the animal interacts with me, you know, and especially a wolf. Especially a wolf, man.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: Damn thing bit me, bit me that day.

JOE ROGAN: Did it really?

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Hard?

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Why’d it bite you?

ETHAN HAWKE: All right. This is one of the best days of filming in my life. No kidding. All right. Which is that amazing animal trainer, Clint Rowe was his name. And we wanted to… It was a scene where I’m getting the wolf to trust me and it’s going to eat out of my hand for the first time.

And so Clint had this amazing idea. It’s like, what if you could see even from that shot, how far… That’s a long lens, that thing put me on a little tiny island where two, you know, like some two rivers fork. And so there’s a little island of land right there. And so we put… See this wolf surrounded by water, right?

And this is Flame. This isn’t the animal that I knew really well. But the way to get it to look like it is, we have to not know each other. And I spent all day out there with this wolf. And whenever the cameras started thinking I might have a chance of getting to pet him, they would start rolling. And I just talked to the wolf and I’d walk around and play. And I just had to try to be real with him.

And he started to like me. I’ll get… It’s not boring. And I’m getting close because he’s starting to like me. We’ve been playing a lot and comes over and… Okay, you’ll see, he… You’ll see him bite me if you want. But… Amazing, amazing animal.

But the point I’m trying to say is I… We sat out there for 11 hours with this starving wolf, right? Trying to get him to eat. Ready? Ready. And… Ouch. Okay.

JOE ROGAN: That wasn’t that bad.

ETHAN HAWKE: Wasn’t that bad. Bled, Joe.

JOE ROGAN: Did it really?

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, sharp teeth.

JOE ROGAN: But it didn’t… Look, he was trying to hurt you.

ETHAN HAWKE: No, no, he wasn’t. He wasn’t. That’s what I mean. He wasn’t. He was… And so… And by the end of the day, check this out, man. I mean, it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I know it’s corny kids movie or whatever, but…

JOE ROGAN: But it’s a real wolf. And he doesn’t know he’s acting.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah. And he doesn’t know he’s acting.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: Right. And so I got to be real. And I mean, I wept when that dog died, you know, because… And I think about that scene if… When I’m doing anything, you know, about being present, right?

JOE ROGAN: And that’s a…

ETHAN HAWKE: If I’m trying to get the shot, the dog is not going to eat out of my… If I actually want to say, “Hey, yo, you can trust me,” right? You know, I’d have to give up for hours, you know, and just sit there. And we didn’t have a phone. I’d just sit there and whittle or something and walk over there, toss rocks for a little bit until he got, you know, it was such a fascinating experience.

JOE ROGAN: Wow. Well, that’s…

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You can’t act right.

The Smell of Authenticity

ETHAN HAWKE: And you never can. You never can. You never can. You never can. And one of the things about, you know, there’s a handful… Laurie Metcalf comes to the line. Denzel Washington, Sally Hawkins, Laura Linney. There’s a handful. I mean, I could… A bunch of them. Philip Seymour. There’s a lot of great actors I’ve worked with in my life.

And what’s so wonderful about them is if you start acting, “What are you doing?” Kind of sense.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: Something smells weird, right? Phil was the best at it because it wouldn’t just be about you. Phil was amazing. You’d sit down to do a scene with him, and he’d be running it and stuff, and he just… “What is it? Something smells bad. What is it? Is it you? Is it me? I don’t know, man. Is the cup… Is the cup wrong? Maybe. Should I be sitting over there? What smells wrong? Something’s fake. What is it? What’s fake?”

“Pace it up. Let’s try pacing it up.” That’s not it. Still bad. “All right, let me… Let me try this.” And then, boom. Next they’d scream at you or something, and everything would shift and, you know, the smell would change in the room.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

The Art of Authenticity

ETHAN HAWKE: And it was like, it’s like we’re just shaking out what is self conscious. Something is self conscious here. Somebody’s posing. Is it me? Is it you? Is it the f*ing prop? Is the table wrong? I don’t believe this scene.

And what it means is when you’re watching the movie, you, the paying audience, aren’t going to be able to disappear something, you know? Have you ever seen, you see a movie sometime? You’re like, why is she wearing that red jacket? Who thought that was a good idea? All you’re thinking about is a red jacket. It’s just wrong. I don’t know why it’s wrong, but everybody knows it. It’s like getting a wrong note.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t necessarily notice with clothes because I’m not very clothes conscious, but I do notice what you’re saying about self consciousness, and I don’t understand what it is. It’s like this untouchable, unweighable, unmeasurable element that just exists and we know it, we know it’s real.

ETHAN HAWKE: Don’t you feel it in here?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: When somebody’s being phony with you?

JOE ROGAN: Oh yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: Somebody has a big agenda about what they want to accomplish on your show or something like that.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, for sure. Especially political people or people that have some sort of a controversial technology that really probably should be regulated.

ETHAN HAWKE: I think what we’re going to be…

JOE ROGAN: Able to do is amazing things and…

ETHAN HAWKE: They get that tone in their voice, that Charlie Brown, “wah wah wah” voice.

JOE ROGAN: There’s just an air of bullshit and I don’t know what that is.

ETHAN HAWKE: But…

JOE ROGAN: It exists in acting. It certainly exists in comedy too. I always say that when I watch a great comic on stage, they take me on a ride. I let them think for me. I’m sitting down, think for me, you’re thinking for me.

And when someone’s thinking for you, it’s just like you’re free to explore their mind. And if they’re self conscious, you’ll feel it. I see someone tense. I have a club, a comedy club in town, and when new people audition there, perform there, you f*ing feel the nerves. You feel the nerves.

And I’m always like, just give him a few minutes. Let them shake it out. Just let him shake that. It’s so hard when so much is on the line to not be self conscious, to be present.

Permission to Fail

ETHAN HAWKE: But you’re smart to give him space. That’s always what I feel. Just give me space. Give me space. Give me space to be bad. Yeah, I need space to be bad. And it’s kind of like in basketball, you got to touch the ball. Let me touch the ball, let me make…

JOE ROGAN: Well, we’ve all been bad, so it doesn’t mean he can’t be good. When I see someone on stage and they’re self conscious and clunky, I’m like, this is a process. This is not like a rocket that when you screw in the last rivets, you’re ready to light the fuse.

ETHAN HAWKE: I love watching an actor I admire be bad. I love it. I love it because it’s not a science, right?

JOE ROGAN: It’s not a science.

ETHAN HAWKE: Sometimes you got to take a shot and sometimes you miss.

JOE ROGAN: Well, and sometimes you’re going through a divorce or you got a f*ing drug problem.

ETHAN HAWKE: Or the director is an asshole, or they change the script the other day, or you hate the DP, producer’s a douchebag. But I always tell my kids who are really interested in my profession or any young actor, I call that “permission to fail.”

I don’t give anybody, I don’t have permission to fail. I don’t care if you don’t like the first AD. I don’t care if you don’t like this. Cannot give them that ability. I still fail. I’m not saying that, but I don’t want to cede it, you know.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: But that takes time. I spent the first 15 years of my career saying I didn’t do a good job because that guy was a jerk. Or I didn’t do a good job because they changed the script. Or I didn’t do a good job because of this, that and the other thing.

And then you see people, back to our hero thing, you know, then you see people are really good and they don’t give somebody the ability to screw up their workday. They don’t have that power. He takes responsibility for that power.

JOE ROGAN: Is that a learned thing or, you could certainly learn some of it from watching other people. But is that just an experience thing?

ETHAN HAWKE: I think it’s the right manifestation of confidence. Right. Young people have to fake confidence. They just have to. When you watch a young person in your club, they got to fake it. Of course, they’re going to have to go burn through their nerves. They’re going to have to.

But once you have experience, you can have real confidence. Because you fought this battle before. I know I have a certain, if I’m overwhelmed with, if my nervous system is at war with myself, I have a certain process. I’ve walked these woods before, you know. I know, and I know why I’m lost, and I know what I need to do.

And it doesn’t mean I’ll always work through it, but I’m much more likely to than I was 20 years ago.

Teaching by Example

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s knowing that it’s this process. When you watch younger people do it, do you ever, are you ever working with a young person and it’s not clicking somehow, and you’re trying to figure out how to help them? Is there a thing you could say to them? Can you just do it by example only?

ETHAN HAWKE: Well, example is the best. The best teacher’s example. Unasked for advice is never heard from. The problem with young people is they don’t often ask for advice.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: They think they’re trying so hard to pretend like they know everything that they feel like to ask advice…

JOE ROGAN: I kind of feel like that’s a generalization, though, because I do know a lot of young people that do ask advice.

ETHAN HAWKE: All right, well, one of the, my thing is I cannot believe the amount of young people who show up on set with their phone. Oh yeah, and what you were saying about hypnosis, let me tell you what’s a destroyer of collective imagination is our phones.

The Phone Problem

JOE ROGAN: I was reading an article today, and I think it was Psychology Today about a study that they’ve done recently on the impact of social media on cognitive function for children, and that it’s just f*ing nuking their brain. Nuking their kids.

ETHAN HAWKE: How old are your kids?

JOE ROGAN: I have a 15 year old and a 17 year old and a 28 year old.

ETHAN HAWKE: So what is your, because my wife and I go through this all. They want it so bad and yet as a parent, you want them to be happy and all their friends have Instagram. I know it destroys my brain. How could it not hurt theirs?

I find my own powers of concentration are suffering. I’ll be reading a book, which I used to do all the time, and every 10 pages I take a break to look at my phone. What’s happening? Why am I doing this?

JOE ROGAN: Right?

ETHAN HAWKE: But they want it so bad, and I want them to be, how do you handle that?

JOE ROGAN: I do not put restrictions on my children’s use of social media, but we do have discussions about it because I think it is an inexorable part of modern society. And I think there is a social ostracization that comes from eliminating social media. Your kid, they can’t have a phone. I see it in other kids. I don’t think that’s the solution.

ETHAN HAWKE: My daughter is loving you right now. She is just like, “See,” because she says, “Let me be. Teach me to be responsible for it myself. Help me do that.” That’s what I believe.

And when we were thinking about what restrictions we were going to do, we went on this walk with this really good friend of mine. Richard Linklater is an amazing person, and they tried to, my daughter’s hit him up of what he thinks. He said, “I don’t know. All I know is that the most important thing is to be your own best friend and that this is a slight obstacle to it.”

That boredom, boredom and sitting still with yourself is a membrane you kind of have to pass through. And if you can make best friends with yourself, then your best friend is always with you.

And so that’s been my solution too, is to say, all right, let’s all, there aren’t limitations. But let’s all sit down and look at, I’ll show you how much I looked at it. How much did you look at it? How we doing? Do you feel? Is it helping? Is it hurting?

Because what you’re a thousand percent right about is it’s part of the social structure of their lives, and to isolate them from it has, you can’t pretend that doesn’t have negative side effects.

Finding Balance

JOE ROGAN: Well, one of my children, well, both of my children, my young children are very disciplined. And one of them just opted out, just decided she’s not going to get on social media anymore. And she got this app. And this is, nobody forced her to do this. She got this app that locks you out, and it shows you how many days you’ve been off of Instagram.

Sort of incentivize you, you know, to stay off of it. You know, the last time she checked, she’d been off, like, 99 days or something like that. No Instagram, no nothing.

But it is addictive. And but there’s a lot of things in life that are addictive. And so the question is, like, how addictive is it? Like, what is calling you to get? Nothing. Because that’s what you get. You get nothing. You get these tiny dopamine hits, staring at something for a few seconds, like, that’s provocative. Or that’s crazy. Like, why is he saying that? Or why is that happening? Oh, my God, they’re going to die.

You know, I have this terrible text thread between me and my friend Tom Segura where we send each other the absolute worst things that we find online every day. Like, every day, it’s, guy got run over by a train, car accident, gunshots, South American assassinations. It’s just all, every day. It’s all the worst things you could possibly find on the Internet.

There’s no good in that. You know, we do that to f with each other. Because it’s kind of funny because he’s a comedian, too, and we just f with each other. It’s just silly. Like, oh, boy. Like, he sends me things, and I send him things, but for the most part, I get nothing. It’s mostly nothing.

Occasionally I say it’s like, as a, I make this excuse, like, as a comic, oh, I need to be up on the zeitgeist. I need to be paying attention to what people are paying attention to. But you kind of get it anyway. You kind of get it anyway just through life. And it’s better that way because then you only get the real significant things.

You don’t get the, you don’t have to sift through everything. It’s like you have a filter. Society acts as your filter to get you the most pertinent information.

But I think leading by example with kids is the best way with everything. My kids are both very disciplined. They get a lot of things done and they work really hard, which I’m very proud of. They’re also really nice, which I’m also very proud of. I think that’s like the hardest f*ing thing to do is just be nice, to be a kind person.

The worst thing for kindness is social media. Children in particular are so f*ing mean to each other on social media. They’re so mean to each other in comments. And they talk about how one of their friends is getting bullied and this person is doing this and they’re leaving comments on this and from a rival high school and this and that.

And it’s like, but I also think that that process of understanding that there is this bizarre social interaction that’s not real, that is a part of life, and that you have to develop a resilience to this.

Dealing with Criticism

ETHAN HAWKE: Getting tough is important. Like, I think one of the things kids are experiencing now is what I experienced with the first blush of celebrity. I mean, you want to talk about negative comments? Try being an actor. Everybody’s got an opinion about, you would have done fake.

JOE ROGAN: You are.

The Weight of Public Opinion

ETHAN HAWKE: What a phony you are. This sucks about you. This is dumb. This is what you like. You know, I have lost unbelievable, ridiculous amount of hours to… My mother will send me a really nice review of something. Something positive about me, right? I’ll look at it and my brain goes, what are the comments? Nasty. I mean, just the nastiest things and you can’t believe.

But I don’t want to, you know, give it too much time. But I actually think it really makes you stronger to realize, of course people don’t like you.

JOE ROGAN: Over time it will make you stronger.

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s fine, they don’t like you. Guess what? Half the people, every party you went to didn’t like you, okay? But they’re also not thinking very much about you. They’re thinking about themselves. And you start to realize that this is just people talking at the barbershop. People have been gossiping their whole throughout the history of mankind.

Now, you can read it if you want, but it has no venom in it. It’s not real. And the sooner you learn that other people’s opinions don’t have to affect you, I think the better off you are. So in that way, it hurt me. I’ve seen it happen to actors, especially if you’re doing stage. I’m sure with comics, when you’re doing a play and you have to do it every night and you start reading a lot of bad things that people say about you, it is demolishing to your confidence.

You know, I mean, I had this actor friend of mine, we shared a dressing room, and one day he came in and he was great in the show. And he came in and his whole energy was dark. I was like, you already… “I went down the rabbit hole last night. Just read what people are saying about me on the Internet. And everybody thinks I’m terrible in this place.” And I’m like, they don’t like your character.

You know, like, people are not so brilliant. You know, it’s all geniuses out there chiming in on what a jerk you are at three in the morning.

JOE ROGAN: Right?

ETHAN HAWKE: Okay. So you don’t have to take it seriously. But, you know, he… It took him weeks to get his mojo back because every… He would step out on stage just imagining this chorus of hate.

The Reddit Rabbit Hole

JOE ROGAN: I had the exact same conversation last night with a famous comedian friend of mine. Really, I won’t say his name, but he went down a Reddit rabbit hole the other…

ETHAN HAWKE: I don’t do it anymore.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t do it because I f*ed up and I went down this rabble…

ETHAN HAWKE: Don’t do it. Don’t do it. No good comes from it.

JOE ROGAN: And he was like, “They fing hate me.” I go, no, no, no. They hate themselves. They hate everything. There’s not like Michael Jordan’s not leaving Reddit comments. You know, I’m saying, like, these aren’t winners. These are fing people that are not doing what they want to be doing. And they want to hate on everybody that’s out there in the public eye.

And some of it is valid. You know, the really, the scary hate is when you get hate, like from Quentin Tarantino, where he’s going off on that guy from Paul Dano.

ETHAN HAWKE: But, you know, here… That’s a great lesson. It is, actually. There’s a great lesson. You know what? I don’t think Paul Dano ever knew that so many people loved him.

JOE ROGAN: Right?

ETHAN HAWKE: He’s just… So many people out of nowhere, Paul Dano’s just going about his life. He’s got to wake up one morning and find out this director just went off on him and saying these hateful things. But anybody that knows Quentin knows he just talks, talks, talks, talks, talks, talks. Right. Anybody that knows Paul knows he’s a great world class human being.

And, you know, and all this love for Paul’s coming out and it’s a great lesson in that that you don’t have to worry about the negativity that people send your way. You don’t have to worry about it at all.

JOE ROGAN: Even from one of the greatest actors or one of the greatest directors of all time.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. And guess what? Every, you know, I’m positive. Positive there are great directors that think I suck. I’m positive. Quinn at least says the, you know, he just says whatever comes into his mind. I remember once I met, I met some director, I won’t say his name at a bar, it was a dive bar in New York. He’s a really famous big shot director.

He’s sitting there and he’d just seen my most recent movie. He’s like, “You know, you were pretty good in that one.” And in the comment was the subtitle underneath it was “I have hated you for 27 years.” That’s… It was so clear. You know, hypnosis came through. Yeah, I mean, it was so clear. I was like, wow, wow. Well, no wonder you’ve never offered me a movie.

Directors have opinions, right? They have super strong opinions. What do they have strong opinions about? Acting. Right. And you know, he’s talking about the movie he would have directed.

JOE ROGAN: Okay.

ETHAN HAWKE: He’s not talking about Paul Dano. He’s talking about something else. Like you said about the thing. They’re talking about themselves. Obviously, whenever anybody says something hateful, they’re talking about themselves 100%. That’s not… And the punchline of this whole thing is, you know, I’ve worked with Paul a couple different times and I love the guy and I’m so happy for him immediately. Every other comment everywhere, somebody saying something great about Paul Dano.

JOE ROGAN: The majority, the vast majority of comments were really positive about him. And I went and rewatched the scene because of it. He was great in it.

ETHAN HAWKE: Oh, he’s a great, he played the…

JOE ROGAN: A great. Like that guy.

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s not up for debate. It’s, you know, it’s not up for debate. I’m sure if you were alone drinking with Steven Spielberg, he’d shock you with some opinion. He, you know, he hates…

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: Orson Welles or something like that. You know what I mean? I mean, we wouldn’t be a good director if he wasn’t a picture opinionated. Of course, you know, it doesn’t mean he’s the truth.

The Fragility of a Career

JOE ROGAN: Of course. It’s just the opening up your vulnerability to the masses in the most trivial and flippant ways of commenting, which is like leaving a comment on a YouTube video or something like that. It’s just not wise. It’s not good. Especially if you actually let it get into your psyche and you take it in as real. Because we are designed to recognize threats, danger, negativity, because it’s important.

ETHAN HAWKE: Like, that’s… Sorry to cut you off, but that’s the truth. Yeah. The reason why it hurts me when it comes is exactly what you… I’m worried they’re going to take my career away. I love what I do. If I do a big movie and I really work hard in the New York Times or the LA Times says that he sells… I don’t really care about that critic’s opinion.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: I care… Is this going to stop me from doing what I love? Because I know it’s fragile. I know that there are a million talented people. Right. I know that. I know that I’m lucky. I know that I’m fortunate. So it is scary. It is a threat. Right? I mean, but it is. But you got… You got to get tough. I’m sorry I cut you off and…

JOE ROGAN: I didn’t really have a good point. It’s fine.

ETHAN HAWKE: But you know what I mean. I mean…

Critics and Contributors

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, you do. And I mean, I don’t want to be cruel, but also, this is how I feel. Critics, in particular, I do not think they want to be critics. And I feel like most people who become critics become critics because they don’t have anything to contribute. They’re not great writers, or they never developed the ability to be a great writer, or they never pursued it or whatever it is. They don’t… They’re not great actors. They’re not… They… They’re just criticizing.

Criticizing. Like criticizing from Quentin Tarantino is a very different thing than a criticism that comes from a person that’s just a critic. And I remember I had this… There was this moment when Fear Factor came out. Like, Fear Factor is a fing completely idiotic show. It’s just… That’s all it is, is just escapism. It’s chaos. People doing stupid s for money. This is crazy. This is nuts. Oh, my God. Are they really going to do this? Ah. And maybe you get something out of the end, like, that guy pulled it out. Or she did it. She didn’t want to do it.

ETHAN HAWKE: She faced the snakes. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: But it’s really usually like the end thing is like, something physical. But Fear Factor came out right after 9/11. That’s when it came out. And one of the criticisms was, “Do you really think America needs to be facing fear after we just experienced September 11th terrorist attack?” And I got this question in an interview, and, you know, my… My perspective on Fear Factor in the beginning was, I’m only doing this because I think it’s going to get canceled.

I’m like, I’ll get some material out of this. I’m like, they’re going to sic dogs on people and make them eat animal dicks. I’m in. I’m like, this is getting…

ETHAN HAWKE: This is going to get canceled in, like, f*ing three weeks.

JOE ROGAN: And I’m going to have a bit on how f*ing stupid this show was. And it wound up doing like 168 episodes.

ETHAN HAWKE: It was ridiculous.

JOE ROGAN: And I said… And I got upset in this interview. I go, that’s ridiculous. Like, they were questioning me whether or not America needs to be scared after 9/11. I’m like, it’s not f*ing scary. And I’m like, what are you talking… You’re making something into something. It’s not just so that you can write an article. This is nonsense.

And I go, that kind of criticism is the type of criticism from a person where I’m not interested in your opinion. I don’t think you’re a particularly unique thinker. And you’re saying something that’s nonsense. It’s nonsense. It’s a stupid show. I’ll tell you. It’s a stupid show, and it’s my f*ing show. I don’t care. It’s just entertainment. That’s all it is.

And I think the people that write this are writing this in that way because you don’t have anything to contribute. And I met that person at a party. There was one of those, you know, they have, like… If you’re on a television show, they have those NBC things where you go, and it’s like, there’s all these different reporters and all the actors from all the shows are there. And the guy was like, “You know, I got to tell you, that really pissed me off.” I go, why? Because it’s accurate.

ETHAN HAWKE: I go, what pissed you off?

JOE ROGAN: I go, you say horrible, hurtful things about all these different people, and the course of their career is dependent upon your opinions to a certain extent. You could shape other people’s narratives about who this actor is, about who this person is, and you just do it because you don’t have anything else to contribute. And so when I said you don’t have anything else to contribute, that hurt your feelings. That’s why it pissed you off. It didn’t piss you off because I wasn’t accurate.

And we had this, like, weird moment, you know, where he was, like, taking into consideration what I was saying, and he was like, okay. And I go, I’m not a bad guy. I don’t think you’re a bad guy. But you have to realize there’s weight to your words. And I realize there’s weight to my words. That’s why I lashed out like that.

That… I think this is stupid. I… I’ll tell you, this show. Stupid. It’s a stupid show. We’re not making Shakespeare in the park, bro. We’re… We’re making people, like, line up coffin fill with rats. It’s… But it’s okay. It’s okay to have dumb. It’s okay to have burgers. It’s okay to have, you know, filet mignon at a fine restaurant.

ETHAN HAWKE: Like, absolutely.

JOE ROGAN: All these things are okay. Like, call it what it is. If you want to say it’s a dumb show, I’m right there with you. But if you want to say, like, this is bad for America because America just got attacked by… And it’s called Fear Factor. Like, shut up. Just shut up. And I just think he didn’t like the fact that I was…

ETHAN HAWKE: That you were criticizing him.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I was willing to do what he does to him without fear because I had already checked out of acting. I did five years on NewsRadio, and I decided, I’m done acting. I was like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I only did it for money in the first place. I never wanted to be an actor. The only reason why I ever got on a… I got on a sitcom with zero acting experience. Zero. I mean, I had none.

ETHAN HAWKE: How did it go?

The Devil’s Rag and Learning to Ignore Critics

JOE ROGAN: I did MTV Half Hour Comedy Hour, which was this comedy show that used to be on MTV. I did like a 10-minute set. I got a development deal. I was like, what? Like, all of a sudden they gave me money. I was poor my whole life, and then all of a sudden, I had $150,000. I’m like, this is crazy. I have money. Like, it was nuts.

And my manager actually thought I had a gambling problem because I was spending so much money. And he was like, what are you spending money on? I’m like, eating lobster every night. I was so dumb. I thought I was just going to run out and then I’d go back to being poor again.

But all of a sudden, I’m on this show and I’m acting. And I realized at the end of five years, it was a wonderful job with an amazing, incredible group of talented people, but I don’t want to do it again. It’s not my thing. I don’t like it. So when Fear Factor came up, I’m like, ooh, this is a way to make a lot of money without doing anything. That’s acting. Okay, I’ll do it.

And so dealing with these people that I’d seen the impact of their words on all the people that I worked with, like, we used to sit around, you know, you have the table reads. And then people would start reading Variety and they start reading the Hollywood Reporter and all this different things, and they would all be super bummed out.

And I would call it the “Devil’s Rag.” So I’d go there, oh, you guys are reading the Devil’s Rag again? I go, f throw that away. It was like the early versions of don’t read the comic book. I go, you guys are reading the Devil’s Rag. Don’t f read that. Because then they would be all bummed out, like, oh, they think we suck. Like, no, they suck. We’re trying to make a good sitcom. Let’s just try harder. The best way to not make a good sitcom is to read shitty things about you.

ETHAN HAWKE: Definitely. That’s sure.

JOE ROGAN: It’s going to go in and be really bummed out. And this constant process of dealing with other people’s opinions and especially negative opinions.

ETHAN HAWKE: From people that you—

JOE ROGAN: You don’t really like in the first place, they’re not happy people. It’s such a poison for your mind.

Ignoring the Noise

ETHAN HAWKE: Well, and that’s why we’re talking. The same thing with the Internet is figuring out a way to give it no space in your mind, because you know people are going to do what they’re going to do, and you’re not in charge of them.

That’s what I feel like. When you absorb too much of that hate and take it on yourself, you’re forgetting that somebody writes something hateful about somebody else, whether it’s Quentin or whether it’s this person or that person or whatever, most people hear it and think, wow, I wonder why he said that. What’s wrong with him? They don’t think something.

So when a lot of times I might take really personally something that somebody hateful writes about me. But it’s not like the world believes it, right? The world has people. Michael Jordan, who’s not writing comments, might come across that and think, God, that writer’s an asshole. That’s what he’s—he’s not thinking you’re an asshole, or I, you know, if you’re not saying something substantive, other people have a brain in their head, and they know it.

And so you can just ignore. I feel you can just ignore it. I’ve never gained anything, except perhaps the value of a thick skin from all that.

JOE ROGAN: The value of a thick skin is important, though. And there’s some value to being part of hurt, to taking it in and then realize it’s dangerous to take it in.

The Beginner’s Mind

ETHAN HAWKE: And you must know, like, with your show, I imagine. I don’t really understand really, how this works, but there’s people who finance it and distribute it. There’s people you have to work with, and they all have opinions.

And, like, I’m doing this show right now, the Lowdown, with FX, right. It’s the first time I’ve ever done a television show, and I’m having a great experience with it. But you have to figure out you’re working with a lot of different people. You got FX has got their opinions about how the show is, and they’re going to be distributed on Hulu, and they’re owned by Disney and everybody.

And you have to learn how to take criticism. All right, and also how to stand up for yourself when you know what you know, your aim is true. And you have to be humble enough to tell the difference, because anybody who thinks they’re always right is an asshole. Right?

So sometimes you need their help, and you have things to be taught. And sometimes you have to stand up for yourself and say, this is the kind of art I want to make, and I’m living and dying on this. But actually, what you’re saying actually could help me do what I’m doing.

And knowing the same thing with directors, if you can’t—when you were talking about advice for young people, the first thing that popped in my head is something one of my first directors said to me, which was—he said, what have you done? And I was 21. I was doing my first—I was making my Broadway debut.

And this director said, what have you done? And I said, well, I did Explorers, you know, when I was a kid, and I did this movie, Dead Poets Society, and I acted in this school play. I played Tom in Glass Menagerie my senior year. You know, and this director looked at me and so said, so you’ve done nothing?

And I took offense at that. You know, I said, I have done some things. He said, I need you to say I’ve done nothing. I need you to say, I don’t know. And if you can say, I don’t know, I can teach you. And if you can’t say I don’t know, then I really can’t teach you.

And it was my 21-year-old ego like was just buckling, you know, I do know what I do. I’m doing. I do know what I’m doing. And he said, you’ve never been on Broadway before, you’ve never done Chekhov before and you can’t say, I don’t know what I’m doing. I said, I can’t say that I don’t know what I’m doing. See, it’s not that hard because if you can say that.

I remember this like the first time going out surfing once, somebody’s trying to teach me how to surf and I was like 16, I kept saying, I know how to do it. No, I know how to do it. I didn’t know how to do it, but I couldn’t. My ego couldn’t buck.

And if you can get to that Zen tabula rasa no place, the beginner’s mind. See, now at 55, I always say, I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s so easy for me to say it, you know, it is so easy. In one lifetime is not enough to know what you’re doing. There’s so many more rooms, there’s so many more layers, you know.

And so that’s the advice I have for young people starting, is to be humble and admit because you’ve done a handful of things doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing. And even though I might have even had some success, I didn’t know why it was successful.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: You know, that’s a great—

JOE ROGAN: The beginner’s mind is a great point to start art. Because even if you’re really good at something, like say you’re a good piano player and you want to learn how to play tennis, you start from a beginner’s mind. You have to.

And if you go into that tennis lesson going, do you know how f* good I am at piano? Like, don’t talk to me like that. Like, no, you don’t know how to play tennis. Let me show you how to play tennis. Like, everyone is a beginner at a thing they don’t know. And to take on as many things as you don’t know as possible to keep that beginner’s mind is actually immensely beneficial for your ego, for your objectivity.

Staying Open to Learning

ETHAN HAWKE: For everything, for everything. With somebody like you who’s had a lot of transitions in your life about different career paths and different things that you’re—that’s always forcing you into a beginner’s mind.

And that’s—I think I’ve done the same thing to myself, you know, like, what keeps me excited is like, all right, God, I don’t know. I’m going to write a graphic novel. I’m going to work with this guy, Greg Ruth. He’s a brilliant illustrator. I’m going to make a graphic novel now. I’ve never done that before. I have no idea how graphic novel works. I know I’ve loved them my whole life, but I’ve never made one. Greg has, right? We work together. He teaches.

Sterling Harjo with the show the Lowdown. Boom. I’ve never done a show. He made Reservation Dogs. He’s done this. I don’t know, this landscape. And I love that feeling because I don’t lose all the value of the things I do know about. It’s all there. It’s all there for me. I don’t have to announce it over everybody. It’s not going anywhere.

But if I can orient myself into learning. I like making these documentaries because I’m not a professional documentarian. But what’s weird about it is if I do that and I get in this real kind of open space and then I come back to acting, that beginner’s mind channel is open and I’m available to learn something from somebody else that maybe I might.

Because one of the things I thought when I was young is I thought there was a right way to be an actor. And I was obsessed with somebody doing it wrong. This director is a f* moron and he’s ruining my work, you know.

And then slowly I really realized it’s so obvious there isn’t a right way to make art. There are successful ways and unsuccessful ways. But I wanted everybody to be Peter Weir. That’s what I wanted. Peter Weir had made Dead Poets Society. And that’s what rehearsal is supposed to be like. That’s what the set is supposed to be like. That’s how you’re supposed to talk to other people.

I didn’t know my mentor was a card-carrying, awesome human being. And I was having unrealistic expectations about other people on their path. They haven’t done all that Peter’s done. They don’t know it all. And I just—it would anger me that they weren’t, you know.

And then if you can get in a kind of a more open mind, then you can really listen to people and absorb where they’re at in their journey. And you’re not going to change them. You know, you’re not. This idea that, you know, especially in a film shoot, three minutes, you’re not going to change the way they think. You know, you got to try to do your thing. Lead by example.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: You know, and try to let them not negatively impact you, but maybe you can be open and learn something from them.

JOE ROGAN: And then that whole beginner’s mindset is just immensely beneficial. Like you were saying, how you carry it over to your acting. I would recommend that with anybody who does anything, find another thing that you’re not good at at all and get into that, because that will help you with the thing that you’re good at.

The Value of Being a Beginner

ETHAN HAWKE: And Evan was like, I took—it’s—it happens so often that it’s funny. Like, I take my son out to teach him how to shoot. Right. First skeet thing, you just blast it right out of the air. Second one, blast it right out of the air. Right. You know, you teach somebody to shoot a bow or something. First air, they flip, hits the target. Then they don’t have to target again.

You know, your body, you start thinking too much. You know, I hear—I don’t know anything about golf, but I hear the same thing is true with golf. Young people are often great actors. It’s adolescence in life that makes it harder to get back to that childlike place, you know?

And so I think I’ve even been talking to my wife a lot about, I want to start trying to take piano lessons just to do something I’ve never done on. Because I know—I know it rattles my brain and makes my brain see things different.

JOE ROGAN: Take a new language on. Learn how to play chess. Do something. Yeah. It’s hugely beneficial to be a beginner, I think. A person that only does one thing, there’s something very valuable in that, too. But do one thing, immerse yourself in that one thing, and do it the best you can.

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s true.

JOE ROGAN: The term kaizen, it’s a Japanese term for refining something over and over and over and over again for decades until you absolutely have it perfected.

ETHAN HAWKE: And I believe in that entirely. But I also believe that to master a craft, you have to apprentice three or four that it’s good for. Like, I’m an actor, and I’m going to die an actor, and this is what I’m going to do.

And I have met older actors, actors who are amazing, who I know I’m not as good as. And it kind of thrills me. It thrills me. There’s little nuances of conversation that I don’t quite understand yet, but I know that they do, and I know that they’re right. And I want to understand more deeply.

And I just feel that—I don’t know. I lost my train of thought about that. I don’t know. My computer just shut down. I forgot what I was talking about.

Finding Identity in Your Craft

JOE ROGAN: It’s okay. I think more people need. I think the problem is when you’re really good at something, you find identity in it.

ETHAN HAWKE: Oh. Oh. That’s what I was saying is I know I want to excel at this one craft, but I know that when I direct something, when I write something, if I make a graphic novel, a documentary, I’m learning about things that are adjacent to my specialty. And by doing that, when I go to set and I’m talking to a writer, I know how hard he worked on his script.

Yeah, I’m not going to willy nilly change his lines because I’m not in the mood or I don’t like the way my hair looks or something like that. I’m not going to do that. I have respect for what he did. And because I have that respect, I can offer him my thoughts and we can probably get involved in a really mutually beneficial conversation.

Because I’ve directed, I don’t look at some director and think, well, like I did when I was younger, he’s stopping me. I’m thinking, I know this guy. Sweat this. I know this guy picked this location for a reason. I know this guy has a tenuous relationship with a cinematographer. I know the producers are breathing down his neck. I know he’s got a lot of headaches. I’m going to help him, and I’m going to try to find an app. You know what I mean?

So these ancillary. I do want to have a specialty, but I do think learning the piano might help me be a better actor. Like, I don’t know why. I don’t. I don’t know the logic behind it.

JOE ROGAN: I think in particular, in acting, that would be true because acting is you becoming someone else who’s in life. And life involves a lot of different aspects. There’s a lot of different things that go on in a human being’s mind. The more you can introduce to your mind, the more that would help you become a variety of different people that you’re performing as.

ETHAN HAWKE: See, I mean, wouldn’t it be phenomenal? Be very weird. But, like. So you and I’ve been talking, and I would venture to say we’re doing pretty well three quarters of the time we’re completely immersed in what we’re talking about. And then my brain, why my computer shut down as I start thinking about this actor that I love, Richard Easton, and I start thinking about how I’m still not as good as he is and people. He’s not even famous.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: And I, I couldn’t remember what I was going to say. Right. And you’re talking to me about your kids or something. There’s no way your mind doesn’t drift to something going on in your life. And, and mine does too. Right. And, and, and so that’s what real life is like.

And the actor’s job is to figure out the text and the text be so clear and in there that then you can figure out all the other wavelengths. You know, when you’re watching somebody great, there’s all these other wavelengths that are happening. They have nothing to, they. It’s not that they have nothing to do with the script, but it’s like, it’s like the difference between a sketch and an oil painting.

You know, the script is kind of a beautiful sketch and the actor’s job, director’s job, production designer’s, we’re turning that into an oil painting. And so anyway, I’m just saying, wouldn’t it if I could put a subtitle under everything we’re really thinking while we’re talking, how different would it be and how much more would I learn about you if I knew what, you know, what your guys relationship is really like.

Does he get on your nerves? Do you hate it? You know that he wears a black cap? Do you wish he wore the red one? Do you know? You know, you know what I’m saying? I gotta do so much about when I’m in your space. So much I don’t know about what’s going on today and what you guys are doing later today or how you cut the show or what’s important to you about the show.

Being Present in Conversation

JOE ROGAN: I forget about things I’m talking about all the time because I’m trying to lock into the other person’s personality. And sometimes I forget what I want to say because I’m trying to like. I’m trying to think like you. I’m trying to like completely be in the moment and think like you. That’s what I try to do when I’m doing, when I’m having a conversation with a person.

I try to be as completely locked in as possible. So much so that sometimes I forget people’s names that I know really well. I forget all kinds of things. That’s cool, because I’m not thinking about anything else other than what that person’s thinking and saying and trying to, like, decipher it and trying to, like. Trying to, like, you know, guide the conversation in some sort of an interesting way.

But I forget all kinds of things. I’ll forget important people’s phone numbers, birthdays. I don’t remember anything. Like, so many times I’ll ask Jamie a question like, who’s that fing what? What is this fing name? And then I can’t believe I can’t remember. It’s because I’m not there. I’m lost in what this person is saying.

So I’m. I have to, like, sit down and open up my files and go, oh, there’s all the information again. But I’m not there, so I can’t do that. So I gotta go. Let me go back to my desk and I’ll open up my files. And now I have my information. But when I’m talking to you, I’m not at my desk.

ETHAN HAWKE: That’s what it’s like for me to. To have a great role. My brain disappears into that other psyche and I can kind of do some of the normal stuff of life, drive my kids to school and do some things. But this part of me is floating over here imagining, was this the right way to. How should I wear the jacket? Would he drive a car? What kind of car would he drive? Is that the right car? Is that the right, like, you know, and just my imagination, when it’s really cooking, takes me away.

My favorite things about it is I don’t think about my phone. I don’t think about the emails I didn’t return. I didn’t think about whether I forgot so and so’s birthday for this period of time. This job is so important to me that I’m willing to say nothing else matters, but. But doing as good as I can in this moment, obviously it’s going to matter again when I leave the dressing room and when I do this.

Obviously I’m trying to be a good adult and father and husband and citizen, all that stuff, but it gives me a space where everything else can disappear. Everything else. And that’s what’s so fun about a big ensemble, like, out of. People may like the movie or not like the movie, but I did this remake of “Magnificent Seven,” right?

And when you have a big cast and everybody’s in period costume, you know, and everybody’s on their horse and your jackets from 1876 and their shirt is from, you know, from the Civil War or something like that. And it’s all real. And there’s these old taverns built and there’s dogs on the set and horses peeing and. You know what I mean, it all is so real. And my life is gone.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

ETHAN HAWKE: And I’m just, Goodnight, Robichaux.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

The Power of Insignificance

ETHAN HAWKE: And I gotta worry about how many bullets I have left in my thing. And, you know, and it’s back to hypnosis. And it’s a wonderful relaxation. And that’s the strange thing about it is it’s like, you know when you’re a kid and you first look at the stars or the ocean or something, and you feel powerfully your own insignificance.

And your intellectual brain would think that that would feel better. Oh, you’re in. If somebody told you, hey, you’re insignificant, that feels bad. But when you look at the stars, it feels great.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: And it’s the same feeling of, like, why would disappearing feel so good? I did, when I was young, I did this play with Steve Zahn, great actor. Have you had Steve on your show?

JOE ROGAN: No.

ETHAN HAWKE: Oh, he’s a genius. And he’s so funny. We were doing a play together and. And I would say to him, tonight’s show went really good. Didn’t you think it went well? He’d go, yeah, I thought it went really well. And then the next night I’d come back, tonight sucked, and it sucked. He goes, I thought it went really well. You know, you always think it goes really well.

He goes, I never remember. And the truth is, he’s so Zen. He’s so in the moment, what you’re talking about when you do comedy or when you do your interview interviews, he is so in, he’s so present that he honestly doesn’t remember. And that’s the trick is he doesn’t have this huge opinion.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: Because the opinion gets in your way all the time.

JOE ROGAN: Yes, it really can.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And I think the ultimate in the moment for a person that doesn’t have a craft or thing is staring at the stars because you realize you are a part of everything and you are in this infinite soup of existence that all of your troubles and your. It seems so insignificant in comparison to the vastness of what’s in front of you.

ETHAN HAWKE: And that lets your shoulders lighten up.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: And then you can handle what you can handle.

The Keck Observatory Experience

JOE ROGAN: I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll tell you. When I was younger, when my oldest daughter was. I think she was only like five or six, we went to the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. And I don’t know if you’ve ever been there. It’s on the Big Island. But they told us it’s like an hour and a half drive. They told us when you’re driving up there, go. You’re, you know, you’re going to go to the top and hopefully there won’t be any clouds. So you get a clear vision of the sky.

So as we’re driving up, there’s all these f*ing clouds. I’m like, oh, this sucks. It’s going to suck. We’re driving all this, we’re not going.

ETHAN HAWKE: To see any stars.

JOE ROGAN: We drive through the clouds because it’s really high and you get up to the top and you’re above the clouds. And we got out of the car and my f*ing jaw dropped. It was nuts. It was the craziest image. And I’ve been there three times since. Never recreated it. There’s always been cloud cover that’s higher up. I just caught it the first time I went there at the absolute perfect. It changed my life. It changed my perspective on the universe. Universe itself.

Because it felt like I was. It felt psychedelic. It felt like it was in a spaceship, like a convertible spaceship. And I was looking through the windshield and we were flying through the cosmos and there was an impossible amount of stars in the sky. There wasn’t a spot in the sky that wasn’t filled with stars. The Milky Way was clear as day. It was f*ing bananas. That’s what it looked like.

ETHAN HAWKE: You didn’t feel like you were on a spaceship. You are on one. You’re on an airplane.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: Look at that. That’s it.

JOE ROGAN: That’s. Well, that’s what it kind of looks like. But it was actually even more profound than that.

White Fang and the Aurora Borealis

ETHAN HAWKE: The Keck Observatory, you know, when I was telling you about “White Fang,” my experience with. So I was out there. This is 1989, right? I’m in Haines, Alaska. It’s about 100 miles north of Juneau. There’s no Internet. The mail comes once a week on Monday. If it’s bad weather, the mail doesn’t come till the next week. Right. I’m there for six months. 19 years old. There’s nobody to talk to. I mean, there’s no costar.

JOE ROGAN: The only 19 year old there.

ETHAN HAWKE: Listen, the guy who was the production, you know, the, the production manager or whatever, he was hyper AA, right? And there’s one boss bar in town and he told the manager if I was seen in there, he would shut it down. There was nowhere else to go, what a dick. I was like, I told the guy, I said, look, I’m not going to drink. I got it.

Like the stuntmen are hanging in there, all the other actors are hanging out in there. And I had nothing to do because I couldn’t go in the one frickin bar, right? And for the first three months I was there, it was always dark, right? And then the second three months it was always light and it was just. But anyway, the point is I went on this long walk and I saw the aurora borealis by myself, you know.

And I’d see it night after night, so I just see the sky rippling. And it was like, what you’re talking about? It was like. It actually made me laugh. Wow. You know, it just seemed. It was funny. It was like the cosmos was teasing, going, oh, you think all this is real? Yeah. I was like, I do. I do think it matters whether “White Fang” is a good movie.

And then I just giggle, you know. And I was like, oh, you have no idea what’s going on. And it was, it was some, like, you’re taught something you don’t unsee.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

The Stars and Nature’s Grounding Power

ETHAN HAWKE: You know, I still have over my desk, I have a little postcard from Haines, Alaska. And it still comes to me in my dreams all the time. I’m back there. Wow.

JOE ROGAN: I think we’re being robbed of that because of cities. Light pollution has robbed us of what I think all of our ancestors always inherently observed. When nighttime came around, everybody realized, well, you’re a part of the infinite cosmos and there’s magic to the universe, which is why there were so many people, you know, hundreds if not thousands of years ago that had these whimsical tales and these ideas of the importance of life and existence.

When they’re in the most brutal moments of history, they’re in the most brutal moments of life. Life or death. Hunter gatherers, warring tribes. But yet at night you’re presented with this impossible majesty of the cosmos above your head every night.

Now today we have fing social media. This is your star. You’re staring at a stupid fing screen and when you look up, you just see nothing but blackness because there’s all these city skyscrapers.

ETHAN HAWKE: So why wouldn’t you look at your phone? Exactly.

JOE ROGAN: It’s blinded out the one thing that is like one of the most important, humbling, like grounding experiences. Appearing at the cosmos.

ETHAN HAWKE: Isn’t it weird? It’s so hard to be in a bad mood when you’re looking at the stars. It’s so hard to be in a bad mood when you’re riding a bicycle and you feel the wind in your… I mean, it’s funny. It’s such a simple little thing, a stupid little invention, this bicycle, but you get it and you ride around. It’s very hard to stay in a bad mood if you spend two hours on a bicycle.

And there’s so many things like that that we rob ourselves of. You know, I don’t know even… Like, I find when I’m in nature, exercise, when I run outside and I’m running through the trees and I see a hawk and I see the wind blowing through, and I pass a farm with sheep, and I… It’s like I come back from a long run high and I feel like I like myself.

In the city, I go to the gym and I got on one thing, highlights of all my sports teams that I love, and they’re blinking up and down. And then I got “The World is Ending” on all the news channels blinking up and down. And I got guys who are in better shape than me walking by and girls who are super hot walking by that I’m trying not to look at and be a good person.

And I walk out of the damn gym and I hate myself. You know what I mean? I mean, I got some exercise, but it wasn’t along for the country, and I long.

JOE ROGAN: But anyway, it’s certainly a different experience doing it outside.

ETHAN HAWKE: Is that too much information?

JOE ROGAN: No, that’s us, that’s me, that’s everybody. And, you know, and the thing is, like, the gym wants to keep you occupied because then you’ll show up more often. It won’t be incredibly boring if you…

ETHAN HAWKE: Go to a dank dungeon of a…

JOE ROGAN: Gym with nothing on the walls other than a small mirror that’s covered with other people’s spirits.

Rocky and the Romance of Dedication

ETHAN HAWKE: You know, I think that’s what we all liked in Rocky, when he goes out into the barn, especially Rocky IV. That’s the one I’m thinking of. That’s the one I’m thinking of. In the barn, it’s freezing out and it’s just him and carrying the log.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s hilarious. Yeah. Well, we like the idea. And I was going to bring that up earlier when you were talking about immersing yourself in a role and preparing for a thing. It’s one of the more romantic things to me about fighting when I know that, like, when… Like this past weekend, there was a big UFC.

When a fighter goes into a camp, they go off somewhere, they leave their family behind, often for like, two months at a time. And they just completely immerse themselves in preparation for this one thing that’s going to happen. And every little thing that distracts you robs you away from the potential of that one possible majestic performance, that one career defining performance which they’re all chasing after.

And for a championship level fighter, it’s like the immense pressure and then this thing, this… You call it romantic because it is kind of romantic, this romantic task.

ETHAN HAWKE: Oh, it’s dedication to excellence.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s full dedication. Full, complete dedication. The way that you’re even talking about trying to do your interviews, you’re trying to do your comedy, you’re trying to be inside, but to have something… So I mean, I envy that. When I read about fighters and the dedication, I really kind of long for that experience, that idea of going away.

And I think there’s something about… I’ve always, I don’t know if you think this, but I’ve… Whenever I pass by a monastery, the conventers and these people who are dedicated to their spiritual calling so completely that they’ve isolated out all the noise of life. I’m like, I’m really glad they exist.

I’m glad in the same way I feel about fighters, I feel like, I mean, with the fighters, I really envy it because we all would like to test ourselves. How much could I dedicate myself? How could I, could I go to the next level?

JOE ROGAN: How far could I go?

ETHAN HAWKE: And I think that, oh, just singularity of focus. It feels really good. And there is something, I think, I love stories about fighters and for just that and the fact that it all rests on these X amount of minutes.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And chaos and just what was it like?

ETHAN HAWKE: Was it like watching fighting?

JOE ROGAN: No fighting. Terrifying. Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: Did you ever… Would you ever get to a place of… What’s one of these, Would you ever get to the place where you’re walking into the ring and you weren’t afraid?

Fear and Performance

JOE ROGAN: No. If I did, I didn’t perform well. There was a few times I was overconfident and I didn’t perform well because I tricked myself into not being scared. So, because I wasn’t… Because I didn’t like being nervous. So I tricked myself into thinking I’m so good, I don’t have to be nervous and that I’d fought so many times.

Like the problem is complacency. So if I probably when I was competing, I probably had somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred fights in martial arts. And so I did nothing but that. From age 15 to 21, just traveling around the country and there was times where I did it so much that I was not nervous.

And then I would go there and I wouldn’t fight with… And then I would go, why would I… Missed opportunities. Even if I won, I was, like, hypercritical. Even if I won, I just didn’t… Like, I got hit when I shouldn’t have got hit. Like something was off. I didn’t perform that well.

And I realized somewhere along the line, I think right around I was like, probably 19 or 20, when I really started to figure it out, I was like, oh, you have to be scared. That thing that you don’t like, that’s critical. It’s critical to your performance because it keeps you on edge. You have to be nervous. You have to be.

Mike Tyson talked about it. There’s a fantastic video of Mike Tyson from his documentary where he’s talking about his mindset leading to him getting into the ring and that, you know, he talks about… See if you can find that, Jamie. It’s f*ing excellent.

Because this was Mike Tyson when he was Mike Tyson when he was the most terrifying heavyweight boxer that ever walked the first face of the earth. There was a period of time over, like, two or three years where I don’t think anybody has ever come close to Mike Tyson.

ETHAN HAWKE: I know that’s true.

JOE ROGAN: He was just supreme. He was so good and so different than anybody before him. But it was also his mindset. He’s a great scholar of history. You know, I had a fantastic conversation with him about Genghis Khan. And when we started talking about it, he knew Genghis Khan’s real name. His real name is Temujin. He knew his history.

ETHAN HAWKE: That, you know, such an interesting person. I love to watch all his interviews.

JOE ROGAN: He knew that Genghis Khan’s mother had been kidnapped by on her wedding day, been kidnapped by a rival man and taken away and impregnated. And the man that she was supposed to marry, she never saw again. And then the Genghis Khan was born with a blood clot in his hand. He was holding on to a blood clot as he was a young boy. And it was like a sign that he was going to be a great conqueror and a warrior.

But listen to this. “I’m going to have supreme confidence. I’m scared to death. I’m totally afraid. I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of losing. I’m afraid of being humiliated. Closer I get to the ring, the more confident I get, closer, the more confidence I get. All during my training, I’ve been afraid of this man, as close I get to the ring, the more confident. Once I’m in the ring, I’m a God. No one could beat me.”

That’s an abbreviated version of it. It’s different in the film. It’s like a little bit more drawn out. Somebody edited that down for Instagram. But it’s this thing where you would think, how could that guy be afraid? How is he afraid? He’s Mike Tyson, and this is Mike Tyson in his prime. But you have to be afraid. You’ve got to be nervous. If you’re not nervous, you’re not going to perform well.

Embracing Nervousness

ETHAN HAWKE: Well, it makes me think about earlier in our conversation when I was talking about, oh, you know, when I think about when I was young and I’d be really nervous and pretending I wasn’t nervous, and that was the problem. And that now I said to you, I still experience it. I just know what to do. You remember, like that. We were talking like that. What I know what to do is not to pretend that I’m not nervous.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s as simple as that. When he’s saying, “I’m afraid,” that’s very powerful. It’s kind of the same. A different spin on what I’m saying about. It’s okay to say, “I don’t know,” you know, “I am afraid.”

And there’s… There’s a great Sarah Bernhardt story about this young actress comes up to Sarah Bernhardt. She’s this great actress from the previous, you know, a long time ago, but this before Sarah Bernhardt was about to go on stage, this young actress asked her to sign her program. Sarah Bernhardt took it, and her hands were shaking.

And this young actress said, “Why are your hands shaking?” And she was, “I’m nervous.” And the young person said, “I’m never nervous when I act.” Sarah Bernhardt, “When you know what you’re doing, you will be.”

And that’s great. And it’s a part of, like, what you’re talking about with your fighting, knowing that there’s nothing wrong with anxiety and with nerves. They can be your friend. They are there. They are here to warn you, prepare you, make you train a little harder, make you think a little sharper.

Treating it like, “I’m embarrassed. I’m ashamed of being nervous.” You know, Bill Russell apparently would, like, be sick to his stomach before every game. This is the most winning basketball player in history. He was still… And that’s why he won so much. You know, you have to care.

JOE ROGAN: You have to care.

The Power of Fear and Anxiety

ETHAN HAWKE: And then, strangely, what that Tyson clip gets at, if you can say that the closer you get to game moment, now you’re not pretending and you realize, oh, for me, it’s just a scene, it’s just a play. It’s just, I can handle it.

This is, you remember that jaguar paw in Apocalypto, when he has the moment, he’s running through the woods and he’s so afraid and you realize, says, “This is my forest.” He’s like, I don’t have to be afraid in my forest. I’ll fight these guys. I don’t want to stop running. It’s a great moment in that movie.

And I feel that way when before I’m doing something. This last movie I did, Blue Moon, really, really challenging part. I had so much confidence when we were talking about making the movie. Then all of a sudden it was green lit. But when I flew to the location and I saw the set and was like, oh, it was the weekend before we started. I got so nervous, I got sick.

I woke up in the middle of the night just in pools of sweat and my body was just going, “Ethan, this is going to, are you ready? Are you ready?” And I would wake up, I had to get up so early to go to work. I’d wake up an hour and a half before I was supposed, I got to go over these lines again. I got to go over this. How is this character walking? What is he doing? What is he saying? Is this part ready? Is this thing ready? Do they know what they’re doing on that shot? Is the cigars ready? All the things. What are the things that are going to screw today up? How much can I see the day so that none of these things that might screw it up are going to screw it up.

And so I kind of know what he means when it comes to, you passed through the fire. So when it comes to fighting, well, he’s either going to win or lose. It’s going to be over. Okay. But there’s something powerful that anxiety can be.

JOE ROGAN: A great friend, his mentor, Cus D’Amato, who was also a hypnotist.

ETHAN HAWKE: Really?

JOE ROGAN: Yes, he was a psychologist.

ETHAN HAWKE: I did not know.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, he’s a completely fascinating guy. He started hypnotizing Mike when he was 13. One of the things that he told Mike, he said, “Fear is like a fire. It can cook your food or it can burn your house down. It depends on how you control it.”

ETHAN HAWKE: I feel the same way about money, feel the same way about ego. It can be the fuel of a healthy life. But it has to be garden managed. Has to be managed really well. And it’s sadly daily.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, daily.

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s not like, we’re both old enough to know. It’s not like you have some breakthrough when you’re 33. I’ve had breakthroughs. I feel like, oh, I get it, I get it, I get it.

JOE ROGAN: And then the next day you don’t get it.

ETHAN HAWKE: Sh*t’s gone. It happens to you over and over again. And that’s life, I think.

JOE ROGAN: Yes, that is life.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And that’s great for young people to hear because they think that there’s going to come a point in time where they made it, where there’s no fear. And I’m here to tell you, you don’t want that. You don’t want it. It’s never going to come. And even if you did come, you don’t want it. It’ll rob you of the exciting part of life.

ETHAN HAWKE: You ever hear that Jim Carrey bit? Always makes you laugh. He’s like, he wins the Golden Globe and he goes to bed at night, he goes, “Gosh, I’m a Golden Globe winner. What if I could be a two time Golden Globe winner? What if I could be a three?” The brain always wants more.

JOE ROGAN: Always.

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s just, it can’t stop.

JOE ROGAN: That’s why billionaires still work.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why are they so miserable?

Money, Success, and Happiness

JOE ROGAN: Because it’s just chasing numbers. You’re chasing numbers.

ETHAN HAWKE: One of the things about in the rooms that I’ve been in, in with a lot of money compared to the rooms I’ve been in where there isn’t a lot of money. If you compare the laughter.

JOE ROGAN: Right. Yeah.

ETHAN HAWKE: It’s no contest.

JOE ROGAN: There’s so much pressure involved in that kind of.

ETHAN HAWKE: So why would you want a house with no laughter? I don’t think they have.

JOE ROGAN: Options at that point. I think they’re so locked into what.

ETHAN HAWKE: They do and it gets so competitive. I’ve seen guys like that who get so happy about a deal gone wrong. Right. That’s what it’s fascinating to me. I mean, it’s like, wow, I didn’t. But because the inverse is true. If that makes you so happy, what happens if you lose that million bucks or whatever, 20 million.

JOE ROGAN: And it makes you happy for a brief amount of time? Because the reality is once you’re wealthy, everything else is. My friend Brian said something to me a long time ago. The only amount of money you want is where you can go to a restaurant and not worry what the bill costs. Everything else is bullsh*t.

ETHAN HAWKE: Well, I liken it to what happens if you get in a fender bender. I don’t want to get in a fender bender and have a lot of trouble, right? I want that to be taken care of. You don’t want to not be able to pay your rent because you’re in a fender bender. You don’t want your kid not to get their medicine because you got a fender bender.

You need to have room, a little padding to. I’ve never, there’s no expense. Vacation, an expensive vacation with my kids is not better than any vacation with my kids.

JOE ROGAN: Right, right, right, right.

ETHAN HAWKE: Romance. Same thing. You can spend a fortune on a romantic weekend. It’s not as great as it is to get stuck in a car when it’s a blizzard out and you listen to a great record and she looks beautiful and says something funny and you both laugh. You can’t buy that, right? But there’s this feeling, like you could.

JOE ROGAN: Well, our society puts so much emphasis on ultimate success. Who’s the richest man in the world? Well, do you think the richest man in the world is happier than the 30th richest man in the world? They’re all rich as f*. Everything is available to them. It’s all nonsense after that. After a certain point, what are you doing? Why are you still working? Why are you still chasing zeros and ones? What is the point?

ETHAN HAWKE: What are you chasing? Me? Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t think I’m chasing anything. I try not to be. I just enjoy what I do. I try.

Chasing the Feeling of Creation

ETHAN HAWKE: I don’t relate to it, because that’s what led me to that question is, what am I chasing? What I said earlier, the last thing I shot. We had a couple moments of grace, just weird. I can tell the crew’s losing their lunch, and everybody’s so happy with the take that we got. And it’s kind of moving and, oh, it was perfect. And the light came through the window at the right time.

And then Peter Dinklage said this hysterical thing, and he wasn’t supposed to say it, but it worked out perfect because then the other actress, then she responded in that way. And then my hat fell off, and everybody’s, and it’s just, it’s high. And I drive home and I want to tell everybody, and I can’t wait for the world to see it. I am chasing that. Could that happen again? Yeah. But it’s not something I control. It’s not something that, it’s a feeling I’m chasing.

JOE ROGAN: But it’s a tangible thing. It’s not status or money. It’s, you’re chasing, you’re doing, for lack of a better word, art. And art has a sort of a pretentious air to it. A lot of people, there’s certain words that have been sort of co-opted, but the art of creation, the.

ETHAN HAWKE: Art of doing something you would never. I mean, I know you’re exactly right. And it happens to me all the time. And it bothers me that what people think is pretentious and what people. If I say to you, I really want to make a hundred million dollars, nobody says I’m pretentious.

JOE ROGAN: Right, right.

ETHAN HAWKE: If I say, I’d really like to make something, to make something beautiful that really moves people. What a pretentious a.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ETHAN HAWKE: Why is it. What I was going to say was. Well, you go first. Sincerity.

JOE ROGAN: It’s sincerity. Because some people say that and they don’t mean it. And that’s most of the people that say that.

ETHAN HAWKE: And that’s true. What I was going to say is if you’re, you say 15, 14, your daughter, your youngest, 15. Yeah. If you came home, said, and she had made this crazy collage, and it was combining pictures of her friends from high school and this beautiful watercolor that she did around it. And she sprinkled glue on it and dropped sparkles on it and put it in a weird wood frame that her mother had given her that she liked. And she said, “Isn’t it beautiful, dad?” Would you ever say that’s pretentious?

JOE ROGAN: Of course not.

The True Meaning of Art

ETHAN HAWKE: Of course not. But the goal. When somebody says the word art to me, I don’t hear pretentious. I hear the solar system. I hear human creativity inside of us, man. It is inside me and it’s inside you. And when I see a great movie or when I hear Jimi Hendrix rip a killer solo, then my whole body vibrates. Oh, hey, we’re alive.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

ETHAN HAWKE: When Johnny Cash comes out with a sound you’ve never heard before, when it’s a great rap song, you’re like, I got to hear that again. I feel my heartbeat with that. That’s art. It’s not pretentious. It’s real. And so I feel that way very strongly. And that makes me want to go to set, and that makes me not care whether the movie makes a billion dollars or makes 2 cents.

There’s a great, one of the great old English actor Paul Scofield. I’m going to destroy this quote, but it was in his obituary, and he was in this great movie when I was a kid, A Man for All Seasons. And he was in Quiz Show. And he was a great English actor. And when he died, in his obituary, there was an interview with him.

He said, you were performing King Lear at your local church. At the end, why weren’t you doing it on the West End? Because you were healthy enough. They were asking, why are you doing. He was doing a play at a local church near him. He said, “I really like walking to work. And I realized that I really have always only performed for whoever it is that made me. And I can do that anywhere. I can do it on Broadway. I can do it in a Robert Redford movie, and I can do it in my local theater. It’s the same action.”

And it’s taken me a lifetime to realize that it doesn’t. I just love to do it. And he’s like, and I’d like to walk to work, so I’m not going to West End. And I thought, I love this guy.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, that is real, pure purity.

ETHAN HAWKE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: When you’re, you’re not chasing any prestige, you’re, you’re only doing it for the thing.

ETHAN HAWKE: And I bet there are people that he loved there, of course. Other people you’re doing it for.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, of course. Yeah. And it’s probably more purity to it, knowing that it’s not going to be reviewed in the New York Times. It’s like you’re doing something that you’re only doing it for the love of it.

The Priority of Development Over Winning

ETHAN HAWKE: And if you want to be, if you want to play pro ball, you know, there’s certain things. You know, Augie the Great, he used to coach for UT baseball. His great thing that he’d say, that why he didn’t coach the Yankees or the Red Sox, because he won five NCAA championships. See, the problem is with pro ball, the object of the game is to win. And in college sports, my job is to develop young men, and if I do that right, we will win.

But I like the priority, and I feel like if the priority is my own development, you know, then more times than not, something good will happen. If my priority is to win, make cash, be a big shot, blah, blah, blah, I’ve kind of lost why you should play the game. Yeah. You know, and the trick for me is, well, I do want to be a professional actor. I like being relevant. I like making relevant art. I like talking to people and communicating with people.

So you have to figure out that balance of, like, all right, this is how I pay my bills. This is what facilitates my whole life. So I have to be a little attentive to the professional part of my brain and not let it diminish the kid in me, and to keep them both in some kind of balance. And that’s, for me, been my adult life.

JOE ROGAN: The term “developing men” or “developing people,” developing young people. My martial arts instructor, when I was a young boy, there was a pamphlet that they had released explaining what the classes were all about. And in it, one of the quotes that always stuck with me forever is, “Martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential.”

ETHAN HAWKE: So is acting. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: So is anything. So is playing chess. So is playing music.

ETHAN HAWKE: So is carpentry, if you do it right.

JOE ROGAN: Everything.

ETHAN HAWKE: Everything.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Miyamoto Musashi, the famous samurai, had a great quote: “Once you understand the way, broadly, you can see it in all things.”

ETHAN HAWKE: I carry that “Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” That’s the same idea.

JOE ROGAN: It’s the real beauty of it all, is concentrating on the development of the thing. And in that thing, you will grow as a human.

The Power of Presence and Listening

ETHAN HAWKE: And that’s the thing when we’re talking about boxing or fighting or acting or whatever, the thing about the 100% focus is it’s kind of by shedding everything. There’s a discipline to that, about seeing all the little details. I find, for example, in acting, they always talk about this: Is he a good listener? Like one of the things, like, are you responding naturally like a human being? Can you listen?

In the art of teaching myself about acting, about how to be present with my scene partner, I’ve learned how to be present with you, with my kids, when I’m at a baseball game, with my friends.

JOE ROGAN: Right, right.

ETHAN HAWKE: It actually, like, it’s meaningful. I’m taking the same idea that, but if you train to do a fight well and you really feel what excellence at that level is like, you can feel it in other things. It can translate. You know what sloppy thinking is. If you’ve been relaxed while you’re doing something hard, you know what it’s like when you’re tense because you’re not having that feeling that you had in that fight where you were really great.

That’s the same with, I’ve done performances where it goes up all by itself. And it’s an amazing feeling. A lot of work and preparation has to go into that feeling of disappearing. But now I know when it’s not happening, and it doesn’t mean I can make it happen, but at least an awareness that it’s not happening is a great starting place to go, “Why is it not happening?”

JOE ROGAN: Right? Something smells. Something smells like Phil would say. I want to talk to you about, because Jamie brought this up yesterday, Denzel Washington, when you’re doing “Training Day,” so much, apparently, Jamie was saying, of the dialogue that you guys had was completely improvised by Denzel.

Working with Denzel Washington on Training Day

ETHAN HAWKE: He is an astonishing, and it’s like, yes. The short answer to your question is it was. We would be doing right around, you know, in the back of these cop cars, watching these arrests, or talking to some of these people who really lived the life that we were doing. And they would say something really funny, you know. And I would just see Denzel glance at me, and I realized, oh, that just went in the computer, you know, and then it would come out.

You know, in a scene two months later, that line that that guy said, exactly, it would come out. It was a great script. I don’t want to, David Ayer wrote the script. It’s a phenomenal script. I mean, when I read that script, I wanted that part so badly. Denzel’s one of my favorite actors. He is probably my favorite actor. I think, you know, “Malcolm X” and “Raging Bull” are two towering, maybe Nicholson, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” like, are the three great performances of my lifetime.

But he’s always listening, always listening, talking, asking, thinking, curious. So present, so commanding. And if you take responsibility for your own work, you can have a great experience. And if you don’t, he’ll run you over.

JOE ROGAN: I heard, like, “King Kong ain’t got shit on me,” that was all just completely improvised.

ETHAN HAWKE: So it’s like, towards the last day of the shoot, and I had been, when people say improvised, they think, oh, just some magic lightning bolt happened. It’s months of work. It was improvised. He’s just supposed to yell “f* you” or something as I’m walking away. And this monologue flew out of his mouth. You know, “Y’all going to be playing for the Pelican Bay All Stars. This is my neighborhood. You all just live here. King Kong ain’t got nothing on me.” Just all this stuff.

And it was, it was the last day of shooting or third to last day or something. It was all his prep. Just, he said, “This is, here’s a line that didn’t make the movie, here’s another line that didn’t make the movie, here’s another thing I wanted to say, here’s another thing.” And he just started throwing them all out there.

And I shit you not, man. The shots, it’s on me. I’m walking out of the, you know, walking away from him, screaming all this stuff. And that’s when I say I’m chasing a feeling. That’s one of the, I mean, to just be there that day, you know, to watch a, you know, a great, somebody’s working on a different level than everybody else. You know, he makes all of us look like we’re mastering checkers, you know, and he’s, but to be there and be part of the magic.

And I knew where I’d heard him audition some of those lines. Other places, you know, we run lines together. And he’d try this other thing. He was amazing. Amazing. That’s what I mean by the power of his imagination. He was Alonzo. And anything that he would pick up or hear would go into the computer and then he would look for the ways that it could help the script, look for ways. You know, he wasn’t selfishly tearing the sail up to make it about him. He was always looking to help.

I even remember he came to the set the day I have this scene that he’s not in with the Cholo Gang, you know, and they’re, we’re playing cards and, you know, “You read your shit pushed in,” that scene, you know, where they put me in the bathtub. And Denzel came to set and he watched the scene. He was like, “Damn, I like what, this is going to be the best scene in the movie. And I’m not in it. Hate this scene.” It’s funny. He walked away. It was very gracious. I mean, he was all in that movie.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Ethan, thank you very much, man. This is a really fun conversation. I really enjoyed it.

ETHAN HAWKE: I’m really glad you had me.

JOE ROGAN: Thank you. And thank you for all the movies, man.

ETHAN HAWKE: Enjoy the f* out of it. If you can’t tell, it’s been my pleasure.

JOE ROGAN: Thank you. It’s been mine as well. Thank you. Bye, everybody.

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