Rise to Fame
Dead Poets Society launched him at 18 opposite Robin Williams. Reality Bites made him the Gen X face in 1994. Both could have pushed him toward blockbusters. He kept going the other direction. At 24, he made a two-character film about strangers talking through Vienna for one night, and nobody thought Before Sunrise would work. It did. He returned to the same story with Linklater twice more, nine years apart each time, earning Oscar nominations for co-writing Before Sunset and Before Midnight. Training Day got him one more in 2002. He built a career on the choices nobody predicted.
In the Spotlight
He's in his mid-50s and somehow running hotter than he did at 30. Blue Moon (2025) reunited him with Linklater and earned him Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe nominations for playing lyricist Lorenz Hart. The Black Phone 2 grossed $132 million on the other end of his range. Before Sunrise landed in the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2026, 31 years after Hawke thought nobody would watch it. The debate over whether he's indie or mainstream has run for 30 years. He keeps winning it by being both.
Side Notes
He wanted to be a novelist first. Acting was plan B, and he's never fully abandoned plan A: he's published six books, including A Bright Ray of Darkness (2021). He went uncredited on Before Sunrise despite co-writing it with Linklater and Delpy, but by Before Sunset and Before Midnight, the Academy caught up and he got two screenwriting nominations. He's a distant relative of Tennessee Williams, co-founded a nonprofit theater company in New York, and directed the Lisa Loeb video for 'Stay (I Missed You),' which features his cat.