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Hawke was born on November 6, 1970, in Austin, Texas. After his teenage parents' separation, he moved around the country with his mother until she remarried and settled in Central New Jersey, where Hawke acted in school plays. Hawke's film debut, alongside River Phoenix, came at age 14 in the little-seen science fiction movie Explorers (1985). After high school, Hawke enrolled in Carnegie Mellon University to study acting, only to drop out after landing the part of Todd Anderson in Dead Poets Society (1989). For his endearing portrayal of a shy, sensitive young boy who falls under the sway of iconoclast teacher Robin Williams, Hawke became a teen heartthrob and went on to star in films that, unfortunately, did little to further his career: Dad (1989), White Fang (1991), Waterland (1992), and A Midnight Clear (1992). The actor became the poster boy for Generation X when, sporting a goatee and oozing twenty-something ennui, he appeared in Ben Stiller's Reality Bites (1994) and Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995), playing in the latter a young American traveler who cavorts around nighttime Vienna with Julie Delpy, the two engaging in an all-night existential gab and flirt fest. Hawke then left behind the slacker genre, taking two years off before his next project, the eugenics science fiction movie Gattaca (1997), in which he co-starred with Uma Thurman, whom he would marry in 1998. His ensuing roles included a turn as the prince of Denmark in Hamlet (2000), director Michael Almereyda's thoroughly avant-garde take on Shakespeare's play, and he played Finn in Great Expectations (1998), which set the Charles Dickens novel in present-day New York. In 2001 Hawke received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Training Day (2001); he played a L.A.P.D. rookie opposite Denzel Washington's jaded, rogue-cop character. Hawke has also spent time behind the camera. He directed Josh Hamilton in the beautiful short film Straight to One, the story of a couple, young and in love, living in the Chelsea Hotel. The short has been on the festival circuit. Also, Hawke directed the music video Stay for long time friend and former neighbor Lisa Loeb. In 2001, Ethan made his feature film directorial debut with his drama Chelsea Walls. The movie tells five stories set in a single day at the Chelsea Hotel and has a star studded cast which includes Uma Thurman, Kris Kristofferson, Rosario Dawson, Natasha Richardson and Steve Zahn, to name a few. Hawke stars opposite Angelina Jolie in the recent thriller, Taking Lives. In the fall of 1996, Little Brown published Hawke's first novel, The Hottest State. His second novel Ash Wednesday was published by Knopf in 2002.
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