This article about Ethan Hawke first appeared in the TheWrap Magazine’s Oscar Nominations Preview issue.
They knew it on the first day of rehearsal. Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Philip Ettinger and Cedric Kyles had gathered to run through the script of “First Reformed” when they all noticed something about their writer-director, Paul Schrader.
“We read through the script, and Paul was trembling,” said Hawke, who plays a minister struggling with a crisis of faith after his son is killed in Iraq. “He was trembling the way a young artist trembles with anticipation, anxiety, fear, electrical current. He’s 71 and he’s made a ton of movies, and he was trembling.