Ethan Hawke

But I ended up getting one of them.

And I dropped out of college and the success of Dead Poets Society sent me, you know, it was like a trajectory.

It shot me down a different course of water than I was on before.

tell you how grateful I am for that first experience.

First of all, if for no other reason than in the success of Dead Poets Society, I didn't take it seriously at all.

I didn't even realize that the movie was successful until a couple years later, because I had so braced myself for failure, perception of failure anyway.

Because of the first experience?

Yeah, because everybody's saying, oh, the movie's so great.

I'm like, yeah, they said this last time.

It doesn't mean anything.

So it kind of taught me at a really young age about to ask yourself why you're doing something.

You know, like, are you doing it for the result of what happens or are you doing it to do it?

And by coming back to acting a few years later, I was just fully braced for it not to go well and it was still going to be worth it.

And so I think it gave me a slight bit of ballast to handle the success of Dead Points.

You went into it for the enjoyment of doing it rather than thinking you were going to be a star.

I had no expectations, but I was certain I wasn't going to be a star.

I was positive of it.

I saw it as a way to make some money and maybe learn about writing and learn about film and a way to get out of college.

Now, what happened is when I got there,

I met all these other young men who were in love with acting.