Ethan Hawke Opens Up About Taking on Movie Roles to Pay His Bills

Ethan Hawke is featured in GQ‘s August 2018 issue, out now.

Here’s what the 47-year-old Boyhood actor had to say…

On celebrity and success: “Success becomes a kind of formaldehyde for some people. They get stuck in it and die there.”

On alternating between different kinds of movie roles to pay his bills: “My best movies are not the ones that pay me: the Before trilogy, Boyhood, First Reformed, Dead Poets Society…I pay my alimony with my acting, I pay my kids’ health insurance with my acting. I pay everybody’s tuition with my acting.”

On his divorce from Uma Thurman in 2004: “When you’re depressed, it’s really easy to see everything that is fake about other people and life, and I just started seeing all that. How phony celebrity was, how phony everything is. You channel your inner Holden Caulfield, you know?”

For more from Ethan, head to GQ.com.