Ethan Hawke has been acting for a while, and now his daughter Maya Hawke has been finding herself starring in a few big projects here and there.
Recently, Maya went viral with her recent interview where she revealed she was required to have a social media following to get a movie made, and her father Ethan had decided to comment on how absurd the situation was.
Social Media Following = Movie Roles
In a recent interview with Happy Sad Confused, Maya Hawke revealed that she was required to keep her social media following in order to help the chances of her movie getting greenlit. Here is the clip of her ‘rant’:
“I’ve talked to so many smart directors who tell me… ‘Just so you know, when I’m casting a movie with some producers, they hand me a sheet with the amount of collective followers I have to get of the cast that I cast, so if you delete your Instagram and I lose those followers, understand that these are the kinds of people that I have to cast around you.’”
While Maya Hawke was just thinking out loud about the situation, her father Ethan was asked about her thoughts at the Berlin Film Festival (via Variety), to which he said, “I really feel for these people. It’s really hard… Sometimes I’ll be setting a movie up and someone will say, ‘Oh, you should cast Suzie.’ I’m like, ‘Who is she?’ ‘She has 10 million followers.’ I’m like, ‘OK cool, has she acted before?’ ‘No, but…’ And you’re like, ‘Wow, so this is going to help me get the movie made? This is crazy.'… So if I don’t have this public-facing [platform], I don’t have a career? And if I get more followers I might get that part? What?”
It’s Not About Protein Shakes and Going to the Gym
When it comes to a lot of young actors today, Ethan Hawke thinks that a lot of them are putting too much emphasis on ‘protein shakes and going to the gym,’ to which he says that it’s much more important to have that passion for actual acting.
He continues, “I wish they could meet [Phillip Seymour Hoffman] like I did when I was 18 because it’s a much more substantive and enjoyable life… I mean, go to the gym if you want to, but that doesn’t make you — Robert De Niro is not great because he has a six-pack. If the part calls for it, he’ll do it, and that’s awesome. But he’s so much more than that.”
With Hawke having been acting for so long in his career, it’s definitely odd for him to see how technology and social media have changed the movie-making process that he’s so familiar with. That being said, there are still some actors who manage to break the mold without having to be so conventionally attractive.
Dominic Sessa managed to wow everyone with his breakout role in The Holdovers back in 2023, and actresses like Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Saoirse Ronan have also avoided getting caught up in the social media bubble.
Admittedly, that doesn’t eliminate that the social media following requirement is a thing, but hopefully things turn around in the next few years because Hawke does have a point that just having a huge following doesn’t make one a talented actor.