The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City. As the Tony Awards cover Broadway productions, the Obies cover Off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions.

Background[link]

The Obie Awards were initiated by Edwin (Ed) Fancher, publisher of The Village Voice, who handled the financing and business side of the project. They were first given in 1956 under the direction of theater critic Jerry Tallmer. Initially, only Off-Broadway productions were eligible; in 1964, off-off-Broadway productions were made eligible.

Award structure[link]

With the exception of the Lifetime Achievement and Best New American Play awards, there are no fixed categories and the winning actors and actresses are in a single category titled "Performance". There are no announced nominations.^[1][2] Awards in the past have included performance, direction, best production, design, special citations, and sustained achievement. Not every category is awarded every year. The Village Voice also awards annual Obie grants to selected companies; in 2011, these grants were $2,000 each to Metropolitan Playhouse and Wakka Wakka.^[3] There is also a Ross Wetzsteon Grant, named after its former theater editor, in the amount of $2,000 (in 2009; in 2011 the grant was $1,000), for a theatre that nurtures innovative new plays.^[4]

Other awards for Off-Broadway theatre are the Lucille Lortel Awards, the Drama Desk Awards, the Drama League Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Awards.

The ceremony for the 2010-11 season was held on May 16, 2011 at Webster Hall (New York City), hosted by S. Epatha Merkerson and David Hyde Pierce.^[3] The ceremony for 2011-12 was held on May 21, 2012 at Webster Hall.^[5]

Lists of winners[link]

• Winners from Infoplease.com
• OBIE winners, 2006-2007, playbill.com
• OBIE winners, 2007-2008, playbill.com
• OBIE winners, 2008-2009, playbill.com
• OBIE winners, 2009-2010, playbill.com
• OBIE winners, 2010-2011, playbill.com

References[link]

External links[link]

• Village Voice Obies Archives of past winners

Kate Mulgrew
at the 2009 Metropolitan Opera premiere
Born	Katherine Kiernan Maria Mulgrew (1955-04-29) April 29, 1955 (age 57) Dubuque, Iowa, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1974–present
Spouse	Robert H. Egan (1982–1993) Tim Hagan (1999–present)
Website
http://www.totallykate.com

Katherine Kiernan Maria "Kate" Mulgrew (born April 29, 1955) is an American actress, most noted for her roles on Star Trek: Voyager as Captain Kathryn Janeway and Ryan's Hope as Mary Ryan. She has performed in many television shows, theater productions and movies, earning a variety of awards for her acting, including an Obie Award, a Golden Satellite Award and a Saturn Award. She has also been nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

Mulgrew is an active member of the Alzheimer's Association National Advisory Council and the voice of Cleveland's MetroHealth System.

Early life[link]

Mulgrew was born in 1955 in Dubuque, Iowa, into an Irish Catholic family,^[1] to Thomas James "T.J." Mulgrew II, a contractor, and Joan Virginia Mulgrew (née Kiernan), an artist and painter. She attended Wahlert High School in Dubuque.

Aged 17, she was accepted at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting in conjunction with New York University in New York City. Mulgrew left NYU after one year.^[2] During this time, to earn money while in New York Mulgrew was employed as a waitress at Friar Tuck, a now defunct restaurant previously at 914 Third Avenue^[3].

Career[link]

Her early career included portraying Mary Ryan for two years on the ABC soap Ryan's Hope (1975) She became a fan favorite and is still associated with the show long after its cancellation. Mulgrew remains friends with former co-star Ilene Kristen and presented a special Soap Opera Digest Award to Ryan's Hope creator Claire Labine in 1995. While in Ryan's Hope she also played the role of "Emily" in the American Shakespeare Theatre production of Our Town in Stratford, Connecticut. In 1979, she began playing Kate Columbo in Mrs. Columbo, a series created specifically for her. In 1986, she appeared on Cheers as Janet Eldridge. In 1993, Mulgrew separated from her husband, Robert H. Egan, to whom she had been married for 12 years. In 1995, the divorce became final, and she was on the verge of selling her house and moving into an less-expensive apartment in Westwood when she received a call to take the part of Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager. Mulgrew made history in the Star Trek franchise when she became the first female captain as a series regular in a leading role. Voyager was the first show broadcast on the new UPN channel, the only series renewed after the channel's first programming season, and its only show to run for seven seasons, making it the UPN's longest running. Mulgrew won the Saturn Award for "Best TV Actress" in 1998 for her performances as Janeway. Mulgrew also voiced the character of Janeway in the PS2 and PC game Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force and Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force 2. In recent years, Mulgrew kept active in doing voice-over work for video games, her latest roles were of Flemeth in the Dragon Age video game series.

During Voyager she also played the role of Titania in the animated series, Gargoyles and Victoria Riddler in Riddler's Moon, a made for TV movie. Mulgrew is also one of six Star Trek actors to lend their voice to Star Trek: Captain's Chair, reprising her role as Captain Kathryn Janeway. The other five actors were Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn, George Takei, Avery Brooks and Majel Barrett.

[edit] Star Trek: Voyager

Mulgrew auditioned for the role of the captain, named Elizabeth Janeway, when producers announced casting for Star Trek: Voyager. She initially submitted a videotaped audition, which she made in New York City in August 1994. However she was unhappy with this audition and auditioned in person a few weeks later. That day, film actress Geneviève Bujold was selected to play Janeway, but left the role after only two days of filming, due to the demanding production schedule required for a television show.^[4]

About her years on Voyager, Mulgrew said:

I'm proud of it. It was difficult; it was hard work. I'm proud of the work because I think I made some little difference in women in science. I grew to really love Star Trek: Voyager, and out of a cast of nine, I've made three great friends, I managed to raise two children. I think, "It's good. I used myself well." Speaking about the best and worst part about playing a Star Trek captain, she said: "The best thing was simply the privilege and the challenge of being able to take a shot at the first female captain, transcending stereotypes that I was very familiar with. I was able to do that in front of millions of viewers. That was a remarkable experience – and it continues to resonate. The downside of that is also that it continues to resonate, and threatens to eclipse all else in one's long career if one does not up the ante and stay at it, in a way that may not ordinarily be necessary. I have to work at changing and constantly reinventing myself in a way that probably would not have happened had Star Trek not come along. I knew that going in, and I think that all of the perks attached to this journey have been really inexpressively great. So the negatives are small.^[5]

[edit] Post-Star Trek

After Voyager came to the end of the full seven seasons, Mulgrew returned to theater and starred in a one-woman play called Tea at Five, a monologue reminiscence based on Katharine Hepburn's memoir Me: Stories of My Life. Tea at Five was a critical success and Mulgrew received two awards, one from Carbonell (Best actress) and the other from Broadway.com (Audience Award for Favorite Solo Performance). In 2006, Mulgrew performed in The Exonerated at the Riverside Studios located in London, England. In the spring of 2007, she appeared in the NBC television series The Black Donnellys as Helen Donnelly which lasted for 1 season. She also performed the lead role in an Off-Broadway production called Our Leading Lady written by Charles Busch in which she earned a nomination from the Drama League for her performance.^[6]

In 2007, Mulgrew played Clytemnestra in New York for Charles L. Mee's Iphigenia 2.0. She won the Obie Award for outstanding performance. In June 2008, Mulgrew appeared in Equus on Broadway, playing Hesther Saloman, a public official who is empathetic toward the play's central character. The play opened on September 5, 2008 for a strictly limited 22-week engagement through February 8, 2009.^[7]

Also in 2008, Mulgrew filmed the 30-minute courtroom drama The Response which is based on actual transcripts of the Guantanamo Bay tribunals. It was researched and fully vetted in conjunction with the University of Maryland School of Law and was shot in three days. Mulgrew portrays Colonel Sims and she, the other cast members and crew agreed to defer their salaries to cover the production costs. The film has been screened at a number of sites and is available on DVD.^[8]

In 2009, Mulgrew returned to television in the NBC medical series, Mercy playing the recurring role of Jeannie Flanagan (the mother of the show's lead, Veronica).^[9] Due for release in 2010 is the film The Best and the Brightest, a comedy based in the world of New York City's elite private kindergartens. Mulgrew will play The Player's wife. Also in development is the film The Incredible Story of Joyce McKinney and the Manacled Mormon.

In a message to her fans on her official website she said, "I am looking for a play and hope that it will come to me before I become irritated. But I realize, even in this wish, that I have been a little spoiled as an actress and that in the waiting there is a kind of lovely discipline."

In 2010, Kate Mulgrew starred as Cleopatra in William Shakepeare's Antony and Cleopatra at Hartford Stage. As of July 2011, she has appeared in the Adult Swim series NTSF:SD:SUV::. Also in 2011, Mulgrew appeared in the feature length documentary The Captains. The film, written and directed by William Shatner, follows Shatner as he interviews each of the other actors who played a Starfleet captain within the Star Trek franchise.^[10] During that same year, she guest starred on the third season of the series Warehouse 13. Her character, Jane Lattimer, is part of a four episode story arc.

Personal life[link]

From her first marriage, to Robert H. Egan, Mulgrew has two sons, Ian and Alec. For a time, Mulgrew dated Star Trek director Winrich Kolbe.^[11]

Mulgrew has been married since 1999 to politician Tim Hagan, a former Ohio gubernatorial candidate and a former commissioner of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Mulgrew's mother Joan introduced them, and he proposed to Mulgrew on the set of Star Trek: Voyager.

Mulgrew is also a member of the National Advisory Committee of the Alzheimer's Association. Mulgrew's mother, Joan Mulgrew, died on July 27, 2006, after a long battle with the disease.^[12] According to a Women's Health TV show report in 2002, Kate Mulgrew had raised over $2 million for the Association.^{[citation needed]}

Mulgrew is also an opponent of abortion and capital punishment. She received an award from Feminists for Life, a pro-life feminist group. She is quoted as saying "Execution as punishment is barbaric and unnecessary", "Life is sacred to me on all levels" and "Abortion does not compute with my philosophy."^[13] More recently Mulgrew has become the voice of MetroHealth in Cleveland, Ohio.

Filmography[link]

Television programs[link]

Films[link]

Theater[link]

Video games[link]

Awards and honors[link]

References[link]

Notes

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kate Mulgrew

• Official website
• Kate Mulgrew at the Internet Movie Database
• Kate Mulgrew at AllRovi
• Kate Mulgrew at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• UFragTV Interview At Big Apple Comic Con 2009 on YouTube October 18, 2009
• Scifinews-TV LIVE! - Complete Panel with Kate Mulgew (17.09.2011 - Prague)

Liev Schreiber
Schreiber at the 7th Annual Chanel Tribeca Film Festival Artists Dinner 2012.
Born	Isaac Liev Schreiber (1967-10-04) October 4, 1967 (age 44) San Francisco, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, producer, director, screenwriter
Years active	1991–present
Partner	Naomi Watts (2005–present; 2 children)

Isaac Liev Schreiber ( /ˈliːɨv/ not /ˈliːv/; born October 4, 1967), commonly known as Liev Schreiber, is an American actor, producer, director, and screenwriter. He became known during the late 1990s and early 2000s, having initially appeared in several independent films, and later mainstream Hollywood films, including the Scream trilogy of horror films, Phantoms, The Sum of All Fears, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Salt and Goon. Schreiber is also a respected stage actor, having performed in several Broadway productions. In 2005, Schreiber won a Tony Award as Best Featured Actor for his performance in the play Glengarry Glen Ross. That year, Schreiber also made his debut as a film director and writer with Everything Is Illuminated, based on the novel of the same name.

Schreiber is in a relationship with Naomi Watts, with whom he has two children.

Early life[link]

Schreiber was born Isaac Liev Schreiber in San Francisco, California, the son of Heather (née Milgram) and Tell Schreiber, a stage actor and director. His mother already had three sons when he was born.^[1] Schreiber's father, who is of Austrian, Swiss, Irish, and Scottish descent, was from a wealthy "WASP" society family from Bucks County, Pennsylvania; he graduated from Hampshire College and was a wrestling and football star.^[2][3][4] Schreiber's mother, who now lives on an ashram in Virginia, was born into a Brooklyn working-class household of Jewish Communists, descended from immigrants from Poland, Ukraine, and Germany. With a firm knowledge of classical music and Russian literature, she has been described by Schreiber as a "far-out Socialist Labor Party hippie bohemian freak who hung out with William Burroughs."^[2][3][5] When Heather was twelve, her own mother, Liev's grandmother, was lobotomized.^[2] His mother has said that she named him after her favorite Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, while his father has stated that Schreiber was named after the doctor who saved his mother's life. His family nickname, adopted when Schreiber was a baby, is "Huggy."^[2]

When Schreiber was one year old, his family moved to Canada.^[3] According to Tell, at the beginning of their marriage, in San Francisco, Heather had a bad experience on LSD. Over the next four years, she was repeatedly admitted to hospitals and underwent therapy.^[2] After Tell threatened to admit her to a mental institution, she left. As Tell pursued his wife, Liev and his mother were trailed by private detectives in various states; when he was three, his father kidnapped him from an upstate New York commune where Heather had decamped. By the time Liev was four, he was living with her on the fourth floor of a dilapidated walkup at First Avenue and First Street in New York City (his half brothers from her first marriage were with their father in a duplex on Central Park West), and he was the object of a fierce custody battle, which bankrupted his beloved maternal grandfather, Alex Milgram. (Milgram was the significant male in Schreiber’s youth. He played the cello and owned Renoir etchings, and made his living by delivering meat to restaurants.)^[2] When Schreiber was five, his parents divorced; his mother won custody, and the two moved to a cold-water flat on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York City, where he was raised.^[3][6] They frequently had no electricity, hot water, or even beds.^[6]

His mother was "a highly cultured eccentric" who supported them by splitting her time between driving a cab and creating papier-mâché puppets."^[2] On Schreiber's 16th birthday, his mother bought him a motorcycle, "to promote fearlessness."^[2] The critic John Lahr wrote in a 1999 New Yorker profile that, "To a large extent, Schreiber's professional shape-shifting and his uncanny instinct for isolating the frightened, frail, goofy parts of his characters are a result of being forced to adapt to his mother's eccentricities. It's both his grief and his gift."^[2] He endured her mood swings and bohemian proclivities (she made him take Hindu names, wear yoga shirts, and he was forced, briefly, to go to an Ashram school in Connecticut when he was 12).^[7] Schreiber's mother also forbade Schreiber from seeing color movies. As a result, his favorite actor was Charlie Chaplin. In the late 70s and early 80s Schreiber, known then as Shiva Das, lived at the Satchidananda Ashram, Yogaville East, in Pomfret, Connecticut. He also abided by his mother's vegetarian diet. In retrospect, Schreiber said in a 2008 interview, he appreciates his mother's influences, saying, "Since I've had Sasha, I've completely identified with everything my mother went through raising me...And I think her choices were inspired."^[1]

Education[link]

Subsequently, Schreiber attended Friends Seminary at the same time as future actress Amanda Peet.^[8]

Schreiber went on to Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts where he began his acting training at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, via the Five Colleges consortium. In March of 1989 Liev played Antonio in the Merchant of Venice alongside another successful professional actor, Jeffrey Donovan. Liev graduated with a master's degree from the Yale School of Drama in 1992,^[9] where he starred in Charles Evered's The Size of the World, directed by Walton Jones. At Yale, Liev studied with Earle R. Gister.^[10] He also attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He originally wanted to be a screenwriter, but was steered toward acting instead.

Career[link]

Early films[link]

Schreiber had several supporting roles in various independent films until his big break, as the accused murderer Cotton Weary in the Scream trilogy of horror films. Though the success of the Scream trilogy would lead Schreiber to roles in several big-budget studio pictures, Entertainment Weekly wrote in 2007 that "Schreiber is [still] best known for such indie gems as Walking and Talking, The Daytrippers, and Big Night.^[11]

After Scream, Schreiber was cast as the young Orson Welles in the HBO original movie RKO 281, for which he was nominated for Emmy and Golden Globe Awards. He then played supporting roles in several studio films, including the 2000 movie of Hamlet with Ethan Hawke, The Hurricane with Denzel Washington, and The Sum of All Fears with Ben Affleck. The 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, with Washington and Meryl Streep, was another major film for the actor, stirring some controversy as it opened during a heated presidential election cycle. Schreiber also played Robert Thorn with Julia Stiles in the 2006 film The Omen, a remake of the 1976 horror classic The Omen (1976). Schreiber's character is an American ambassador who learns to his horror that his son is actually the literal Antichrist. He played the time-traveling ex-boyfriend of Meg Ryan in Kate and Leopold, with Hugh Jackman's century-old character, Leopold, having followed Liev into current times, playing the ultimate love interest of Meg Ryan's Kate.

Shakespeare[link]

Along with his screen work, Schreiber is a well-respected classical actor; in a 1998 review of the Shakespeare play Cymbeline, The New York Times called his performance "revelatory" and ended the article with the plea, "More Shakespeare, Mr. Schreiber."^[12] A year later, Schreiber played the title role in Hamlet in a December 1999 revival at The Public Theater, to similar raves. In 2000, he played Laertes in Hamlet, a modern adaptation of the play. His performance in the title role of Henry V in a 2003 Central Park production of that play caused Lahr to expound upon his aptitude at playing Shakespeare. "He has a swiftness of mind," Lahr wrote, "which convinces the audience that language is being coined in the moment. His speech, unlike that of the merely adequate supporting cast, feels lived rather than learned."^[13]

In June to July 2006, he played the title role in Macbeth opposite Jennifer Ehle at the Delacorte Theater.

Narration and voiceover work[link]

Schreiber has narrated a number of documentaries, along with Michael G. Stanton, many of them aired as part of PBS series such as American Experience, Nova, and Secrets of the Dead. He is also the voice behind the television commercials for Infiniti.

In 1994, he narrated Two Billion Hearts, the official film of 1994 World Cup.

Schreiber is also the voice of HBO's Sports of the 20th Century documentaries. Similarly, Schreiber is also the narrator of HBO Boxing's Countdown and 24/7 documentary series. Schreiber served as the voice of Skeletor in the 2002 incarnation of Masters of the Universe. Schreiber narrated Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Cincinnati Bengals in 2009, and Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals and Broad Street Bullies in 2010, on HBO. Schreiber provided the narration for "Making of Pumping Iron" documentary that is included in a special anniversary edition of the movie Pumping Iron. He also narrated the History Channel specials Ape to Man and America: The Story of Us.

Schreiber reprised his role as narrator for HBO's 24/7: Road to the Winter Classic NHL documentary, which followed the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals as they prepared to face each other in the 2011 NHL Winter Classic at Heinz Field, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 1, 2011. Once again, Schreiber is the narrator for the HBO Series, "24/7 : Road to the Winter Classic". This year, the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Rangers will battle in the Classic, at Citizen's Bank Park in the 2012 NHL Winter Classic.

Schreiber also narrated the 2011 documentary Hitler's G.I. Death Camp on the National Geographic Channel. The newly released 2012 "Kinderblock 66" is narrated by Schreiber.

Directing and 2000s work[link]

Schreiber (right) and other actors celebrating the world premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine in Tempe, Arizona, April 27, 2009

Schreiber told The New Yorker in 1999 that "I don't know that I want to be an actor for the rest of my life." For a time in the late nineties, he hoped to produce and direct an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice starring Dustin Hoffman.^[2] In that time, Schreiber started writing a screenplay about his relationship with his Ukrainian grandfather, a project he abandoned when, according to The New York Times, "he read Jonathan Safran Foer's hit novel, Everything Is Illuminated, and decided Mr. Foer had done it better."^[14] Schreiber's film adaptation of the short story from which the novel originated, which he both wrote and directed, was released in 2005. The film, which starred Elijah Wood, received lukewarm-to-positive reviews,^[15] with Roger Ebert calling it "a film that grows in reflection."

In 2002, he starred in Neil LaBute's play The Mercy Seat along with Sigourney Weaver on Off-Broadway that was critically and commercially very successful. In the spring of 2005, Schreiber essayed the role of Richard Roma in the Broadway revival of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross. As Roma, Schreiber won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play.

In 2006, Schreiber was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.^[16] In fall of that year, Schreiber directed and starred in the "2006 Join the Fight" AIDS PSA campaign for Cable Positive and Kismet Films (others involved with the campaign included actress Naomi Watts, fashion designer Calvin Klein, and playwright Tony Kushner).

Schreiber played Charlie Townsend in the 2006 film The Painted Veil, starring opposite Watts and Edward Norton. In the same year, Schreiber also appeared in The Omen, which was a remake of the 1976 film of the same name. For television, the actor portrayed a character who temporarily replaces Gil Grissom, played by William Petersen, in the CBS show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, during the 2006–2007 season. He played Michael Keppler, a seasoned CSI with a strong reputation in various police departments across the nation, before joining the veteran Las Vegas team. Schreiber joined the cast on January 18, 2007 and shot a four-episode arc.^[11]

Schreiber appeared in the Broadway revival of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio. The show began previews at the Longacre Theatre on February 15, 2007 in preparation for its March opening. On May 11, 2007, He won the Drama League Award for distinguished performance for his portrayal of shock jock "Barry Champlain" in Talk Radio, and has received Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations for the role. The New York Times' Ben Brantley called his performance "the most lacerating portrait of a human meltdown this side of a Francis Bacon painting."^[1]

Schreiber played the womanizing Lotario Thurgot in Mike Newell's screen adaptation of Love in the Time of Cholera, released in 2007. In a January 2007 interview, Schreiber mentioned that he was working on a screenplay.^[11]

Late in 2008, Schreiber portrayed Jewish resistance fighter, Zus Bielski in the film Defiance, alongside Daniel Craig. In February 2008, 20th Century Fox announced Schreiber would play the mutant supervillain, Sabretooth in the Marvel Comics film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, released on May 1, 2009.^[17] In March 2010, it was announced that he was interested in returning for Scream 4,^[18] portraying Cotton Weary a fourth time (the film was subsequently made without his involvement).^[19]

In 2010, he returned to Broadway in A View from the Bridge for which he received a Tony nomination for Best Leading Actor in a Play.

Personal life[link]

Schreiber with Naomi Watts in 2012.

Schreiber has a half sister and four half brothers, one of whom, Pablo, is also an actor. The other half-brothers are Max, Charles, and Will. He has a Jack Russell terrier named Chicken (born in the spring of 2000). He is a good friend of Dustin Hoffman. He enjoys basketball, fencing, cycling, and has played football in the past. He has previously dated Kristin Davis, and Kate Driver, sister of Minnie Driver.

Rumors around his relationship with English actress Naomi Watts (with whom he appeared in The Painted Veil) have long flown over whether the couple are in fact married. Schreiber has tricked the media once before in 2007 by calling Naomi his wife. This caused the rumours about a secret ceremony to again come up; however, there has been no proof given other than Liev's word in the video which was shot in early June 2009. Naomi was quoted near the end of January 2010 saying that Liev had in fact given her a ring (which she was not wearing at the time) but that neither of them wanted to rush into marriage.^[20] Their first son Alexander Pete was born on July 25, 2007. They call him Sasha, a Russian nickname variation of the name Alexander.^[21][22] On December 13, 2008, Watts gave birth to the couple's second son, Samuel Kai.^[23][24] Watts stated in April 2010 that the pair would have a third child if they could guarantee a baby girl.^[25]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Liev Schreiber

• Liev Schreiber at the Internet Broadway Database
• Liev Schreiber at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Liev Schreiber at the Internet Movie Database
• Liev Schreiber at the TCM Movie Database
• Interview with Details
• Interview with Men's Vogue
• Interview with W magazine

Ethan Hawke
Hawke at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival
Born	Ethan Green Hawke (1970-11-06) November 6, 1970 (age 41) Austin, Texas, United States
Occupation	Actor, director, screenwriter and novelist
Years active	1984–present
Spouse	Uma Thurman (1998–2004) Ryan Hawke (2008–present)

Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an American actor, writer and director. He made his feature film debut in 1985 with the science fiction movie Explorers, before making a supporting appearance in the 1989 drama Dead Poets Society which is considered his breakthrough role. He then appeared in such films as White Fang (1991), A Midnight Clear (1992), and Alive (1993) before taking a role in the 1994 Generation X drama Reality Bites, for which he gained critical acclaim. In 1995, he starred in the romantic drama Before Sunrise, and later in the 2004 sequel Before Sunset.

In 2001, Hawke was cast as a rookie police officer in Training Day, for which he received a Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category. Other films have included the science fiction feature Gattaca (1997), the title role in Michael Almereyda's Hamlet (2000), the action thriller Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), and the crime drama Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007).

Hawke has appeared in many theater productions including The Seagull, Henry IV, Hurlyburly, The Cherry Orchard, The Winter's Tale and The Coast of Utopia, for which he earned a Tony Award nomination. He made his directorial debut with the 2002 independent feature Chelsea Walls. In November 2007 Hawke directed his first play, Jonathan Marc Sherman's Things We Want. Aside from acting, he has written two novels, The Hottest State (1996) and Ash Wednesday (2002). Between 1998 and 2004, Hawke was married to actress Uma Thurman.

Early life[link]

Hawke was born in Austin, Texas, to Leslie (née Green), a charity worker, and James Hawke, an insurance actuary.^[1][2] His maternal grandfather, Howard Lemuel Green, served five terms in the Texas Legislature and was a minor-league baseball commissioner.^[3][4] Hawke's parents were students at the University of Texas at the time of his birth, and separated in 1974.^[1][5]

After the separation, Hawke was raised by his mother. The two relocated several times before settling in New York, where Hawke attended the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights.^[3] Hawke's mother remarried when he was 10 and the family moved to West Windsor Township, New Jersey,^[6] where Hawke attended West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South.^[3][5] He later transferred to the Hun School of Princeton, a secondary boarding school,^[7] from which he graduated in 1988.^[8]

In high school, Hawke aspired to be a writer, but developed an interest in acting. He made his stage debut at age 13, in a school production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan,^[3][9] and appearances in West Windsor-Plainsboro High School productions of Meet Me in St. Louis and You Can't Take It with You followed.^[10] At Hun School he took acting classes at the McCarter Theatre on the Princeton campus,^[10] and after high school graduation he studied acting at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, eventually dropping out after he was cast in Dead Poets Society (1989).^[11] He twice enrolled in New York University's English program, but dropped out both times to pursue acting roles.^[9]

Career[link]

Early work[link]

Hawke obtained his mother's permission to attend his first casting call at age 14.^[12] He secured his first film role in 1985's Explorers, in which he played alongside River Phoenix as an alien-obsessed schoolboy who builds a spacecraft with his friends.^[13] The film received favorable reviews^[14] but made poor box office revenues,^[15] a failure which Hawke has admitted caused him to quit acting for a brief period after the film's release. Hawke later described the disappointment as difficult to bear at such a young age, adding "I would never recommend that a kid act."^[11] His next film appearance was not until 1989's comedy drama Dad, where he played Ted Danson's son and Jack Lemmon's grandson.^[11]

In 1989, Hawke made his breakthrough appearance, playing shy student Todd Anderson opposite Robin Williams's inspirational English teacher in Dead Poets Society.^[5] The film was critically well-received;^[16] the Variety reviewer wrote "Hawke ... gives a haunting performance."^[17] With revenue of $235 million worldwide, the film remains Hawke's most commercially successful picture to date.^[18] Hawke later described the opportunities he was offered as a result of the film's success as critical to his decision to continue acting: "I didn't want to be an actor and I went back to college. But then the [film's] success was so monumental that I was getting offers to be in such interesting movies and be in such interesting places, and it seemed silly to pursue anything else."^[12]

Hawke's next film, 1991's White Fang, brought his first leading role. The film, an adaptation of Jack London's novel of the same name, featured Hawke as Jack Conroy, a Yukon gold hunter who befriends a wolfdog.^[19] According to The Oregonian, "Hawke does a good job as young Jack, being both physically robust but still boyishly naive. He makes Jack's passion for White Fang real and keeps it from being ridiculous or overly sentimental."^[20] Hawke then appeared in A Midnight Clear (1992), a well-received war film by Keith Gordon,^[21] and 1993's Alive, an adaptation of Piers Paul Read's 1974 book, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors.^[22]

Critical success[link]

Hawke's next part, in the Generation X drama Reality Bites (1994) as Troy, a slacker who mocks the ambitions of his love interest (played by Winona Ryder),^[12][23] received critical acclaim. Film critic Roger Ebert called Hawke's performance convincing and noteworthy: "Hawke captures all the right notes as the boorish Troy."^[24] The New York Times noted, "Mr. Hawke's subtle and strong performance makes it clear that Troy feels things too deeply to risk failure and admit he's feeling anything at all."^[25] Nonetheless, the film was a surprise box office disappointment.^[23]

The following year Hawke again received critical praise, this time for his performance in Richard Linklater's 1995 drama Before Sunrise. The film follows a young American (Hawke) and a young French woman (Julie Delpy), who meet on a train and disembark in Vienna, spending the night exploring the city and getting to know one another.^[26] The San Francisco Chronicle praised Hawke and Delpy's performances: "[they] interact so gently and simply that you feel certain that they helped write the dialogue. Each of them seems to have something personal at stake in their performances."^[27]

Away from acting, Hawke directed the music video for the 1994 song "Stay (I Missed You)" by singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb.^[28] He also published his first novel in 1996, The Hottest State, about a love affair between a young actor and a singer. Hawke said of the novel, "Writing the book had to do with dropping out of college, and with being an actor. I didn't want my whole life to go by and not do anything but recite lines. I wanted to try making something else. It was definitely the scariest thing I ever did. And it was just one of the best things I ever did."^[12] The book met with a mixed reception. Entertainment Weekly said that Hawke "opens himself to rough literary scrutiny in The Hottest State. If Hawke is serious ... he'd do well to work awhile in less exposed venues, perhaps focusing on shorter stories and submitting them to little magazines."^[29] The New York Times thought Hawke did "a fine job of showing what it's like to be young and full of confusion", concluding that The Hottest State was ultimately "a sweet love story".^[30]

In Andrew Niccol's science fiction film Gattaca (1997), "one of the more interesting scripts" Hawke said he had read in "a number of years",^[31] Hawke played the role of a man who infiltrates a society of genetically perfect humans by assuming another man's identity in order to realize his dream of space travel. Although Gattaca was not a success at the box office^[18] it drew generally favorable reviews from critics,^[32] and Hawke's performance was critically well-received. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reviewer wrote that "Hawke, building on the sympathetic-but-edgy presence that has served him well since his kid-actor days, is most impressive".^[33] 1998 saw Hawke appearing in Great Expectations, a contemporary film adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel,^[34] and collaborating for a second time with director Richard Linklater in The Newton Boys, based on the true story of the Newton Gang, a family of bank robbers from Uvalde, Texas.^[35]

In 1999 Hawke starred in Snow Falling on Cedars, in which he played a reporter named Ishmael Chambers, who, after being wounded in World War II, comes home to take over his family newspaper after his father's death.^[36] The film, based on David Guterson's novel of the same title, received ambivalent reviews and Entertainment Weekly concluded, "Hawke scrunches himself into such a dark knot that we have no idea who Ishmael is or why he acts as he does."^[37] He also appeared that year in Frank Whaley's directorial debut Joe the King (1999).

Hawke's next film role was in Michael Almereyda's 2000 film Hamlet, in which he played the title character. The film transposed the famous William Shakespeare play to contemporary New York City,^[38] a technique Hawke felt made the play more "accessible and vital".^[39] Salon reviewer wrote: "Hawke certainly isn't the greatest Hamlet of living memory ... but his performance reinforces Hamlet's place as Shakespeare's greatest character. And in that sense, he more than holds his own in the long line of actors who've played the part."^[40] In 2001, Hawke appeared in two more Linklater movies: Waking Life and Tape, both critically acclaimed.^[41][42] In the animated Waking Life, he shared a single scene with former co-star Julie Delpy continuing conversations begun in Before Sunrise.^[43] The real-time drama Tape, based on a play from Stephen Belber, took place entirely in a single motel room with three characters played by Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard and Uma Thurman.^[44] Hawke regarded Tape as his "first adult performance",^[45] a performance noted by Roger Ebert for its "physical and verbal acting mastery".^[46]

[edit] Training Day and after

Hawke's next role, and one for which he received substantial critical acclaim, came in Training Day (2001). Hawke played rookie cop Jake Hoyt, alongside Denzel Washington, as one of a pair of narcotics detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department spending 24 hours in the gang neighborhoods of South Los Angeles. The film was a box office hit, taking $104 million worldwide, and garnered generally favorable reviews.^[18][47] Variety wrote that Hawke's part "shows signs of coming to new life as a screen actor after somnolent turns in the likes of Snow Falling on Cedars. Hawke adds feisty and cunning flourishes to his part that allow him to respectably hold his own under formidable circumstances."^[48] Paul Clinton of CNN reported that Hawke's performance was "totally believable as a doe-eyed rookie going toe-to-toe with a legend [Washington]".^[49] Hawke himself described Training Day as his "best experience in Hollywood".^[12] His performance earned him Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.^[50][51]

Hawke at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival

Hawke pursued a number of projects away from acting throughout the early 2000s. He made his directorial feature debut with Chelsea Walls (2002), an independent drama about five struggling artists living in the famed Chelsea Hotel in New York City.^[52] Upon its release, the feature received mixed reviews; The Los Angeles Times wrote that Hawke's directorial debut "has brought Nicolette Burdette's play to the screen with fluid grace and a perfect blend of dreaminess and grit",^[53] while The Boston Globe stated that his direction is not apparent in Chelsea Walls.^[54] The film was critically and financially unsuccessful.^[55] A second novel, 2002's Ash Wednesday, was better received and made the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction.^[56] The tale of an AWOL soldier and his pregnant girlfriend, between whose perspectives the narrative alternates,^[12] the novel attracted critical praise: The Guardian called it "sharply and poignantly written ... makes for an intense one-sitting read".^[57] The New York Times noted that in the book Hawke displayed "a novelist's innate gifts ... a sharp eye, a fluid storytelling voice and the imagination to create complicated individuals", but was "weaker at narrative tricks that can be taught".^[58] In 2003 Hawke made a television appearance, guest starring in the second season of the television series Alias, where he portrayed a mysterious Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent.^[59][60]

In 2004 Hawke returned to film, starring in two features, Taking Lives and Before Sunset. In Taking Lives opposite Angelina Jolie, he played a man who could identify a serial killer who had been assuming the identity of his victims.^[61] Director D. J. Caruso's decision to cast Hawke was based on the "vulnerability" he displayed in Training Day and believed he could do the same with his character.^[62] Upon release, Taking Lives received broadly negative reviews.^[63] Despite the film's reception, Hawke's performance was favored by critics; the Star Tribune noted that Hawke "plays a complex character persuasively".^[64] Before Sunset, the Linklater-directed sequel to Before Sunrise which Hawke co-wrote with Linklater and Delpy,^[65] was more successful, with a contributor of The Hartford Courant reporting that the three collaborators keep Hawke and Delpy's characters "iridescent and fresh", concluding that they are the most delightful and moving of all romantic movie couples.^[66] Hawke called it one of his favorite movies, a "romance for realists".^[67][68] Before Sunset was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Hawke's first screenwriting Oscar nomination.^[69]

Hawke at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival

2005 saw Hawke star in the action thriller Assault on Precinct 13, a loose remake of John Carpenter's 1976 film of the same title, with an updated plot. Hawke played Sergeant Jake Roenick, a Detroit policeman working desk duty in a rundown police station.^[70] Assault on Precinct 13 received reasonable reviews; some critics praised the dark swift feel of the film, while others compared it unfavorably to John Carpenter's original.^[71] Hawke also appeared that year in the political crime thriller Lord of War, playing an Interpol agent chasing an arms dealer played by Nicolas Cage.^[72]

In 2006 Hawke was cast in a supporting role in the film Fast Food Nation, an adaptation by Linklater and Eric Schlosser of Schlosser's best-selling 2001 non-fiction book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.^[73] The same year Hawke directed his second feature, The Hottest State, based on his eponymous 1996 novel.^[74] The movie was screened at a special presentation at the 2006 Venice International Film Festival^[75] and was released in theaters to a tepid reception in 2007.^[76]

Hawke then appeared alongside Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, and Albert Finney in Sidney Lumet's crime drama Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007).^[77] Hawke played an ex-husband in desperate need of child support who decides to rob his parent's jewelry store with his brother (Hoffman), with disastrous consequences. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised Hawke's performance, noting that he "digs deep to create a haunting portrayal of loss".^[78] USA Today called the movie "highly entertaining", describing Hawke and Hoffman's performances as excellent.^[79]

In 2008 Hawke starred with Mark Ruffalo in the crime drama What Doesn't Kill You.^[80] Despite the favorable reception,^[81] the film was not given a proper theatrical release due to the bankruptcy of its distributor.^[82] 2009 saw Hawke appear in two features: New York, I Love You, a romance movie comprising 12 short films,^[83] and Staten Island, a crime drama co-starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Seymour Cassel.^[84] The following year he starred as a vampire researcher trying to save humanity from extinction in the horror-thriller Daybreakers (2010).^[85][86] The feature received reasonable reviews,^[87] and earned $51 million worldwide.^[18] His next role was in Brooklyn's Finest, released in March 2010, as a narcotics officer who uses his position to steal drug money and administer vigilante justice.^[88] The film opened to a mediocre reception,^[89] yet his performance was well-received, with the New York Daily News concluding, "Hawke – continuing an evolution toward stronger, more intense acting than anyone might've predicted from him 20 years ago – drives the movie."^[90]

In a television adaptation of the Herman Melville novel Moby-Dick, Hawke played the role of Starbuck, the first officer to William Hurt's Captain Ahab.^[91] The two-part miniseries aired on Encore in August 2011.^[92] The same year he starred opposite Kristin Scott Thomas in Pawel Pawlikowski's The Woman in the Fifth, a "lush puzzler" about an American novelist struggling to rebuild his life in Paris.^[93][94] Hawke will next play a true crime writer in Scott Derrickson's horror-thriller Sinister,^[95] and appear in a cameo role in Total Recall (2012).^[96] It was announced that Hawke had signed on to Universal's futurist thriller Vigilandia^[97] and the Spierig brothers' science fiction film Predestination.^[98]