Ethan Hawke: Originality Requires Risking Failure | Big Think

Almost every manifestation of our personality is artifice. How we dress, how we do our hair, how we speak. You know, there is truth that is way beyond where you were born and what school you went to, and you know, whether you smoked Marlboro cigarettes or whether you're heterosexual or homosexual. I mean, there’s a greater truth of the essence of who you are, and that's the actor's job to get to. That can handle any accent or any wig or, you know, I mean, like it’s fascinating.

It’s opened up doors for me later in life as I've started to learn and understand what people would call character acting. You know, it’s opened up possibilities for me that weren't there before. But I made a lot of mistakes turning down really good projects in this kind of knee-jerk idea that I had of what was the truth. You know, I’ve come to believe that that was a lot of self-preservation.

You know, if there was one thing that I’ve learned, that I feel whatever good fortune has put me in the position of realizing this, it is that without risking looking like an absolute fool, you cannot do anything original. Unexpected, anything that comes from your heart, you have to shed that fear of judgment. And that means you may fall on your ass.

One of the wonderful things is, that's our job as members of the artistic community. Your job isn't to succeed; your job is to be one of many people throwing your wind at the door. You’re the wave. One wave is gonna crash through, and it may be you or it may be somebody else, but there are a lot of waves that are gonna add up to somebody breaking through.

I mean, do you think people really looked when Linklater and I first were going around trying to pitch the idea of Boyhood? I got an idea: we're gonna make a little short film about a little boy for 12 years. We're gonna cut it together: be one movie. It'll be all about childhood; it'll be amazing. So wait, it's coming out in 13 years, and wait, does a little boy sign a contract? You can't sign a contract for more than seven years.

Yeah, but if the boy's having a good time... So I put my money in now, and if the boy's having a good time, I get it back in 13 years.

Yeah, nice. What else do you have?

And born to be blue and playing Chet Baker, I had this idea that, you know, that he would speak differently. You know, that he spoke at a higher octave than I do, and I wanted to do the whole part like this. At first, the director looked at me like, "Oh, is he gonna talk funny the whole... it's gonna ruin the movie." But luckily, the guy went with me. And yeah, we could have fallen on our ass, but you have to try. You have to try, and if you don't try, you don't deserve to be there.

You know, I remember my mum—I’ve said this before—summer, but like one of my favorite things that Allen Ginsberg ever said was when he went on The Tonight Show, like as a Hari Krishna and stuff. Somebody said, you know, "You’re being mocked." And he said, "You think I don’t know people are making fun of me? That’s my job. I’m a poet. And some middle-aged insurance salesman is lying in bed tonight, and he’s thinking, 'What the hell was that guy doing on the Johnny Carson show saying Hari Krishna?'"

And it’s breaking the walls of his perception. That's my job as a poet. My job is not to be liked. I think Allen Ginsberg's highest-paying year was $17,000, right? My job is not to make money. I have to, you know, there is some balance at work. You know, I don't want to starve to death, but my job is to be an artist. And to do that, a good artist is ridiculed.