{"id":173939,"date":"2025-12-08T12:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T12:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/173939\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T12:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T12:05:07","slug":"ethan-hawke-aware-of-robin-williams-struggles-on-dead-poets-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/173939\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethan Hawke ‘Aware’ of Robin Williams’ Struggles on Dead Poets Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThough Ethan Hawke<\/a> was just a teenager during the filming of \u201cDead Poets Society<\/a>,\u201d he recognized that Robin Williams<\/a> \u2014 who played inspiring English teacher John Keating in Peter Weir\u2019s 1989 classic \u2014 was struggling.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen asked in an interview on \u201cCBS Sunday Morning\u201d if he\u2019s been able to watch the film after Williams\u2019 2014 suicide amid his battle with Lewy body dementia, Hawke said that \u201cdoes not fundamentally change the way I watch the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEven at 18, I was aware of the complexity of his emotional life,\u201d Hawke continued. \u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of depression in my family, and it was obvious to me that all that power and that charisma came at a certain cost. He was a deeply, deeply sensitive person who was highly attuned to the energy of a room.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHawke recalled that one time on set, Williams was \u201cmaking up lines and everyone was laughing and praising him,\u201d but when Hawke later went to get a glass of water he found Williams \u201chiding in the corner in the dark by himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI thought, \u2018Oh, OK. It makes a lot more sense to me now,’\u201d Hawke said. \u201cIt was a lot. It was taxing. There\u2019s a lot of stories about clowns and the happiness they give and at what cost. So I say all that to say, the end of his life does not define his life to me. And when I watch the movie, I think of the spirit of the man I knew in those days and how powerful it was and how much he weathered that storm of his psyche for us and for other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDead Poets Society\u201d marked the second feature film for Hawke, who has gone on to receive four Oscar nominations. Looking back, he said the movie taught him several important lessons, including how to handle bad reviews.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t realize how much I was being taught and how that sustained me through negative criticism,\u201d Hawke said. \u201cLike, there\u2019s not any rules about being a great actor. Drop dead! So you don\u2019t like it, suck an egg! It\u2019s not my problem you don\u2019t like it. You don\u2019t know what great acting is any more than I do. And those ideas were given to me by playing the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch Hawke\u2019s full \u201cCBS Sunday Morning\u201d interview below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though Ethan Hawke was just a teenager during the filming of \u201cDead Poets Society,\u201d he recognized that Robin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[68773,146,28012,85,46,397,41673],"class_list":{"0":"post-173939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-dead-poets-society","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ethan-hawke","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-robin-williams"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}