Ethan Hawke

Well, first off, I guess the emotional complexity.

I mean, there's the verbiage.

Larry Hart is at this opening night party, and it's kind of like he feels if he ever stops talking, he's going to be shot and killed.

And so he just cannot stop talking.

So there was the amount of text I had to learn.

There's the complication...

He's incredibly... What is it?

It's called the correlation of opposites.

He's two things simultaneously all the time.

He is incredibly jealous, and he's incredibly happy and proud of his friend.

He's gay and in love with a woman.

He's the most diminutive, smallest person in the room, and he's the biggest personality in the room.

The whole experience of making it...

I felt I was being asked to play two things at the same time, which is, of course, why I want to do it.

It was wonderful and it was like the way real people are.

But it's challenging.

Every now and then you do, you bump up against a part that presses you to the wall of your ability.

And you know you can never be as good as the part is demanding of you.

And that's a kind of thrilling spot to be in.

Well, it was illegal in 1943.