Ethan Hawke

Let it be your friend.

This is guiding you towards excellence.

And you don't need to see this as a problem at all.

And he was very profound about that.

Loving yourself and making friends with your demons and being proud of the fact that you care.

Well, that's a very interesting question.

And that really is the essence of...

why I think I wanted to play Blue Moon.

When your entire self-worth is wrapped up in your work, that was the real struggle.

I didn't have any self-worth besides my work.

And so it was death.

If I went out on stage at Lincoln Center, a place that I have the utmost respect for, an establishment that I view as significant,

If I humiliate myself performing the greatest writer in the English language, William Shakespeare, then I'm not an actor, and if I'm not an actor, then I'm dead.

I'm not anybody.

That was the way my thinking was at the time.

So of course I'd be scared.

And so I needed to start rooting self-worth that wasn't just about being an actor.

And I felt that way very much, I think, when I read the script for Blue Moon.

Oh, wow, Larry Hart, if he doesn't have his music, he's nothing.

He's absolutely nothing.