Ethan Hawke on his reunion with Julie Delpy

HAWKE. Reprises role in Richard Linklater’s popular indie franchise. Photo by Ruben Nepales

LOS ANGELES—“She looked down on me,” Ethan Hawke quipped when he recalled the first time he and Julie Delpy worked together in Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” in 1995. Ethan recalled that the France-born Julie has already worked with some of Europe’s finest actors and directors, while he described himself as “kind of the adolescent American.”

“We are a unique couple to put together in the first place, because we both started acting when we were children,” Ethan said of their first collaboration, which resulted in two more films, “Before Sunset” and, now, “Before Midnight.”

“Julie did the (Jean-Luc) Godard film when she was 13,” the 42-year-old Texas native smiled as he cited their vastly different backgrounds. “I did a Joe Dante film. She also worked with Volker Scholondorff and (Piotr) Kozlowski. She was a full-grown, mature artist when I met her. She was much more knowledgeable about cinema, and she looked down on me—I think she judged me. I’m teasing, but that was our dynamic. I was kind of the adolescent American, and she was the wild European.”

Dynamic

Laughing, Ethan said, “That dynamic has pretty much stayed. I’m still the adolescent in her eyes.”

Onscreen, Ethan’s Jesse and Julie’s Celine have earned a devoted following that guarantees a “minifranchise.” “We’re the lowest grossing trilogy of all time,” Ethan Hawke joked. “That’s what we like to say. We can’t compete with ‘Iron Man.’” Film lovers are grateful to have this alternative fare, resulting in a strong first box-office showing for this indie franchise.

Ethan continued to share his first memories of Julie: “This woman has become the woman she wanted to be,” he said. “When I first worked with her, she was passionate, fiery and intense. She was a little unhappy, trapped in the perimeters of an ingénue. It wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life—to be cute. She wanted to be a filmmaker, and now she is.”

Asked what he has learned about women from his costar, Ethan grinned and answered, “Julie would tell you, ‘Not enough.’ If Julie were here right now, we would be getting lots of laughs. I wish I wasn’t going to say this, but I’ve learned a tremendous amount, and I did when I was younger. Her friendship through the years has been essential in me being able to see the world through the eyes of a woman. It’s difficult for men and women to be friends. There’s an intimacy that’s created when you act and write together—we’ve done both three times.”

Ethan added, “I get to hear about what it’s like to become a mother from somebody whom I knew when she was 23 and said she never wanted to be a mother, and when she was 32 and would cry because she was worried that it wasn’t going to happen. I got to see her upset about how hard it is to go through this environment in Hollywood as a woman.”

Has his friendship with Julie and the insights he gained helped him in his relationships? “I don’t want to give her that credit,” he replied with a laugh. “I can see Julie has helped create Jesse. There’s a misleading idea that Julie does Celine’s dialogue and I do Jesse’s, then Rick (Linklater) edits. It’s really not the process—it’s much more mysterious than that. ”

The dialogue in the three films sounds so spontaneous that some moviegoers think that a lot is improvised. “Everything in the three films is 100-percent scripted,” Ethan stressed. “I’ve never done less improv in a movie than I have in them. Rick works tirelessly to create the impression of improvisation, from little things, like goats walking by for no reason. Rick is a student of life, and of human beings. We work hard even to the point of creating dialogue digressions.”

Ethan revealed the two inspirations for his character: “For me, Rick is, in a lot of ways, the basis of Jesse,” he shared. “I love to study him and the way that he thinks. I don’t even know why I’m sharing this with you, but it’s a character, a portrait I’ve tried to make of a person. My father reminds me of Rick in a lot of ways. Rick is very intelligent and thoughtful, and a soft-spoken person, almost naïve in how much he loves life. He’s a fun person to be around. I wanted that for Jesse.

“In the second film, that’s a darker moment in his life. I thought that part of the interesting thing is watching a person’s life go in and out of the dark. Jesse is a lot happier in this film than he was in the second. He was still a dreamer and was philosophizing in the first one.”

Ethan also credits Richard for the success of the “Before” series. “This collaboration has been the single most enjoyable process,” he volunteered. “Of course, I need to include Rick in that, too. He’s the essential element of the band. He’s the one who brought Julie and me together. He wanted to create three-dimensional male and female characters. He’s been pushing us to tell the truth, and take our acting to the next level in these movies. Each one gets a little more difficult.”

Details

Ethan obliged with details about his other equally interesting film with Richard, for now billed as “Untitled 12-Year Project.” “Rick and I have been working together a little before we started ‘Before Sunset.’ It was 11 years ago. We’d been making a short film once a year. It’s Rick’s idea about doing a movie on childhood. Instead of focusing it on one part of childhood, like when you’re 5, 6 or adolescent, he cast a young boy who was 6 at the time. I play his father; Patricia Arquette is his mother. We experience life through his eyes. I am not in all the episodes, like as he gets into being a teenager, he gets less concerned with his parents. It’s now becoming more about girls and sports.”

The actor added, “In a way, the film is a portrait of Rick’s childhood. It’s a part-time capsule of the last 12 years. This young man has created this character. I’ve seen it—it’s absolutely staggering, because what happens is, it starts when the boy is 6, then three scenes later, his voice is changing. It’s poetic and beautiful! I go, ‘When did he…?,’ then it’s almost like time-lapse photography with a human. We’re doing the last one this year.”

Still on youth and aging, Ethan, who looks good in his 40s, commented, “It’s nice to look at young people. There’s so much hope in them. Julie and I both feel stronger, healthier and happier now than when we were 23. We were full of insecurities. When you get older, you look at youth and you see it with nostalgic eyes. You think, “What nice skin…?” but you forget what it felt to be inside that skin; to be so scared and not know what you believe in or who you are or what’s going to happen, whether you’re a good person or not. All these things that young people are nervous about. So, I prefer now.”

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