Ethan Hawke says Willie Nelson provides ‘clarity’ during times of struggle
Ethan Hawke celebrates Willie Nelson’s 90th birthday and tells Fox News Digital ‘a lot of people disagree, but a lot of people can agree about Willie Nelson’
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Ethan Hawke isn’t holding back when it comes to the powerful forces he believes are controlling the entertainment industry.
During a new interview with GQ, the Oscar-nominated actor took aim at wealthy power players, blasting “greedy bastards” who think they control every aspect of Hollywood and predicting a major rebellion against the industry.
“I believe in rebellion. And I think people are going to wake up and punch back and there’s going to be massive movements in music and massive movements in live theater and massive movements of people getting together,” Hawke said.
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Ethan Hawke spoke about the “greedy bastards” who believe they control Hollywood
“So don’t worry that the money and the greedy bastards that think they control everybody, they always lose in the end,” he continued. “And they’re all going in the grave eventually. They think they’re winning, but they’re losing because their lives are worthless.”
Hawke also expressed frustration with the financial pressures shaping Hollywood, arguing that the projects actors care about most often come with the smallest paychecks.
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“There’s a direct correlation. I find that the more you love a project, the less you get paid,” he said. “If you want to beat the algorithm, it’s very difficult to do that and be paid.”
Hawke found fame at a young age.(Matt Winkelmeyer/
This isn’t the first time Hawke has spoken about the pitfalls of Hollywood.
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Last year, the actor called celebrity a “poison” for a young actor’s brain.
During an appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Hawke got candid about his start in Hollywood as a young man and reflected on the psychological effect of becoming famous at a young age.
“I think celebrity is like a tiny drop of mercury. Or it’s poison. It’s poison for your brain,” the actor said. “To be a professional actor at a young age, it’s dangerous in extremely insidious ways that are very, very hard to perceive when it’s happening,” Hawke said.
Rogan compared the experience of becoming famous as a child to concrete. If concrete is made incorrectly, with the wrong amount of water or cement, that’s it, he explained. Rogan added that once it dries there is no way to repair or fix it.
Ethan Hawke at the 2026 BAFTAs on Feb. 22
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“That analogy works for all walks of life. Really. If you have something really traumatic happen in childhood, it’s very hard to recover. It’s a tremendous amount of work to recover. And I agree with you, like I think celebrity is like a tiny drop of mercury. Or it’s a poison. It’s a poison for your brain,” Hawke said.
During his GQ interview, Hawke expressed the same sentiment.
“I wouldn’t be the first person to say that there’s an aspect of celebrity that is like a disease,” he said. “And you can handle little bits of it, but too much of it — we can see what happened to Elvis and we can see Michael Jackson. It’s a form of isolation. It’s like being put in a zoo, and zoo animals go nuts. So do human beings.”
“And it seems like a kind of nice isolation because people are giving you money, and they’re telling you you’re wonderful, but nobody’s being real with you,” he continued. “And that makes people insane. And they start scratching, trying to find some real life. And sometimes people do that with drugs, some people do that with acting out or getting in fights or whatever the ways that people do it.”
Hawke once referred to celebrity as a “poison.”(Gareth Cattermole/ for BFI)
Last year, fellow actor Dakota Johnson also ripped into Hollywood, calling the industry an absolute “mess.”
During her appearance on the show “Hot Ones,” Johnson was asked why “Hollywood is risk-averse.”
“I think it’s hard when creative decisions are made by a committee, and it’s hard when creative decisions are made by people who don’t even really watch movies or know anything about them … that tends to be what’s occurring a lot,” Johnson shared with host Sean Evans.
Johnson, who has grown up in the business as the daughter of actors Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, is no stranger to the inner workings of Hollywood.
The “Fifty Shades of Grey” actress’ comments come as studios continue to create sequels and remakes, with original storytelling often sidelined.
Actress Dakota Johnson called Hollywood an absolute “mess.”(Photo by Christopher Polk/CBS
“When something does well … studios want to keep that going so they remake the same things,” she claimed. “But humans don’t want that. They want fresh. They want to feel new things, experience new things, see new things.”
She added, “So I don’t know, I guess it’s all just a bit of a mess right now, isn’t it?”
Fox News Digital’s Sarah Sotoodeh and Stephanie Giang-Paunon contributed to this post.
