Ethan Green Hawke, a renowned actor, was born on November 6, 1970, in Austin, Texas, to Leslie Carole (Green),a charity worker, and James Steven Hawke, an insurance actuary. At the time of his birth, his parents were students at the University of Texas, but they divorced when he was just five years old. His mother, a single parent, moved around the country with Ethan for the next five years before remarrying in 1981 and settling in Princeton Junction, New Jersey.
Ethan attended West Windsor-Plainsboro High School and later transferred to the Hun School of Princeton, where he discovered his passion for acting through classes at the McCarter Theatre on the Princeton campus. Initially, his ambition was to become a writer, but his acting lessons and student productions led him to audition for a role in the sci-fi adolescent adventure film Explorers (1985). He landed the role alongside River Phoenix, although the movie received positive reviews, it failed to achieve commercial success, deterring Ethan from pursuing further movie roles for several years.
Ethan was accepted into the prestigious Carnegie-Mellon University to study theatre, but his studies were interrupted when he won a breakthrough role opposite Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society (1989). He did not complete his degree and instead went on to appear in numerous films, including the Generation X drama Reality Bites (1994),for which he received critical acclaim. He starred in the romantic drama Before Sunrise (1995) and its sequels Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013).
Ethan's subsequent acting career has been a mix of theatre work, earning him numerous awards and nominations, including a Tony Award nomination for his role in "The Coast of Utopia" at the Lincoln Center in New York. He has also appeared in a range of films, including Gattaca (1997),where he met his first wife, Uma Thurman, and Training Day (2001). His role as the father in the coming-of-age drama Boyhood (2014) earned him multiple award nominations, including the Academy, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and SAG Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In addition to his acting career, Ethan has also ventured into writing, publishing two novels: "The Hottest State" (1996) and "Ash Wednesday" (2002).