There are tough auditions, and then there’s walking into a room with Denzel Washington and realizing the script is basically a suggestion. Ethan Hawke says that was his Training Day trial by fire—the moment that set the tone for one of the great cop-movie duos of the 2000s, heck, best movies of the ‘00s, and landed him his first Oscar nomination.
The Before Sunrise star unpacked the story while accepting the Miami Film Festival’s Variety Virtuoso Award, in a wide-ranging chat that also touched on his nine-film collaboration with Richard Linklater, teaming with Taylor Swift on “Fortnight,” and a career-spanning 2025 movie schedule that includes Blue Moon, The Black Phone 2, The Lowdown, and a documetnary narration, which you can enjoy with an Apple TV subscription. The A-lister shared:
I came into the screen test and he just didn’t say one scripted line in the entire screen test. He was just improvising with me and it was really difficult to try to keep up with him.
Improv opposite Washington is the kind of gauntlet that can rattle even a seasoned pro. The Gattaca lead says he beat the nerves by channeling the filmmaker who taught him to listen first and push the scene second, Richard Linklater, his creative north star since Before Sunrise. The actor continued:
I was just telling myself, in my head, ‘Why don’t you just pretend Rick’s in the room?' I’ll try not to be intimidated and I just made up lines like I would with Rick.
If you’ve watched Training Day, that tracks. Jake Hoyt’s shell-shocked sincerity never reads timid; it reads reactive and alive, which is precisely what you’d expect from a screen test born in controlled chaos. Washington’s Alonzo Harris weaponizes unpredictability; Hawke’s solution was to stay present and keep answering the moment–a real “Yes, And” moment, for my Improv comedy nerds. The chemistry we see on screen started right there in that room.
The Miami conversation wasn’t just a nostalgia tour. Hawke’s having a real big year. He’s earning awards buzz for Linklater’s Blue Moon; he returned as the Grabber in the new horror movie, The Black Phone 2, which has had a strong box office performance, and he starred in FX’s The Lowdown; directed a Merle Haggard doc; and narrated Apple TV’s Vietnam: The War That Changed America.
That “future-facing” energy is kind of the point, he told the crowd he’s grateful for the accolades, but already itching for the next at-bat. And that’s what makes him such a fascinating actor to watch, even after nearly four decades in the biz.
Ethan Hawke’s “really difficult” audition sounds like the best kind of stress test, especially for the kind of pressure cooker of a movie Training Day turned out to be. The pair of actors proved that the tension created in that audition room could hold once the cameras rolled, and the rest, as they say, is modern movie history. If you want to revisit the classic crime drama, it's available to stream with a Netflix subscription.
