Richard Linklater’s ‘Before’ trilogy is a Bible to romantics worldwide. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy fall in and fall out of love over decades of weaving in and out of each other’s lives. But back then, Hawke didn’t think the movie was going to resonate with the audience.
As a young actor developing his craft, he was ambivalent about the movie’s reception. However, his friend and director Richard Linklater assured him of the film making an impact. For him, two people coming together and making an instant connection was the perfect recipe for a universal story.
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Ethan Hawke’s Doubts About ‘Before Sunrise’
Ethan Hawke sat down with Daveed Diggs for Interview magazine, sharing his concerns about the success of the first film of the ‘Before’ trilogy. Hawke was coming off the success of Ben Stiller-directed ‘Reality Bites.’ However, he doubted his standing as an actor in a more verite project. Things soon changed after ‘Before Sunrise,’ which became the ‘Before’ trilogy.
Ethan Hawke told Diggs, “I remember when I was doing those movies with Richard Linklater, for example, the ‘Before’ trilogy or ‘Boyhood,’ I didn’t even know if they would come out. One part of my brain thought, ‘Oh, people are going to love this.’ And another part of me thought, ‘Nobody’s going to be interested in this.’ I didn’t care. I knew that I was interested in it, and I can hear that voice.”
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How Richard Linklater Convinced Ethan Hawke To Do ‘Before Sunrise’
Ethan Hawke also recalls his early days as an actor. He told Diggs how he was caught between wanting to deliver a box office hit and a good movie. It was not until Richard Linklater himself addressed Hawke’s concerns that he was convinced. He told Hawke that despite seeing all kinds of cinema, connecting with a human being was the only real moment of excitement for him. And he was sure the audience would share a similar resonance with their movie.
Richard Linklater told Hawke “Everything that I see is all this drama, [so much so] that you would think my life, our lives, have no drama. That’s not the way I feel. My life feels very exciting to me and I’ve never been involved in a chase or a gun shootout. My life is exciting to me. And what’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me? Connecting with another human being…If we can put that on screen I think people will care.’”
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