Ethan Hawke Recalls 'Hours' Spent Memorizing a 'Staggering Amount' of Lines for “Blue Moon”: 'Broke My Brain' (Exclusive)
Ethan Hawke Recalls 'Hours' Spent Memorizing a 'Staggering Amount' of Lines for “Blue Moon”: 'Broke My Brain' (Exclusive)
Jack Smart, Andrea MandellThu, February 26, 2026 at 1:00 PM UTC
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Ethan Hawke, nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for Blue Moon, catches up with PEOPLE in this week’s issue
The “staggering amount of verbiage” required to play Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart “broke my brain,” he says
“I needed to know the whole movie like a play,” adds the star, “without the six weeks of rehearsal for a play that you would have”
Ethan Hawke was, in his words, “fired from a cannon” in his latest movie.
Nominated for his work in Blue Moon at this year's Academy Awards, Hawke, 55, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue that what he’ll always remember about the Richard Linklater-directed Lorenz Hart biopic is simple: “the hours put into memorizing that text.”
“I had more lines on my first day of filming Blue Moon than I'd probably had in 10 years combined,” says the actor-filmmaker. “It was just a staggering amount of verbiage. And I have a lot of pride in that. I feel like I'm good at it."
And, he adds with a smile, “it broke my brain."
Ethan HawkeCredit: Michael Schwartz; Set Design: Sean Costello/Art Department Agency
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How exactly does an actor pull off so many words? “Hours of memorizing, just the repetition over and over again,” says Hawke.
The Robert Kaplow-penned Blue Moon, he adds, “takes place in real time in one set,” a New York City bar one 1943 night near the Broadway premiere of Oklahoma!
“I needed to know the whole movie like a play — without the six weeks of rehearsal for a play that you would have. So it was kind of being fired from a cannon," he says.
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Still, “it never felt like a job to me,” he adds, as the film marked a ninth collaboration with Linklater, 65 (the two have a 10th project in the works, which Hawke has called "among the greatest films ever made").
“We started working together in 1994,” says Hawke, who released Before Sunrise with Linklater in 1995. “We've been pushing each other and driving each other for 30 years. And we've made films that are really meaningful to us. And when other people like them, it feels tremendous.”
Ethan Hawke in "Blue Moon"Credit: Sabrina Lantos/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Hawke is nominated for his first Best Actor Oscar, marking his fifth overall Oscar nomination to date. His history with the Academy stretches back to his supporting work in 2001’s Training Day, and he has the rare distinction of being nominated in both acting and screenwriting categories.
“I was fast asleep,” recalls Hawke, on the morning of the nominations announcement on Jan. 22. He had told his wife, Ryan Shawhughes, “to wake me up if I'm nominated and to not wake me up if I wasn't.”
Ethan HawkeCredit: Michael Schwartz; Set Design: Sean Costello/Art Department Agency
What did becoming a five-time Oscar nominee feel like? “A wash of gratitude,” reflects Hawke. “And it's hard — my brain, the way it works, is I can't help but think about the actors that I know who did great work that weren't nominated.”
Blue Moon costars Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott. Hawke’s upcoming acting projects include the films Tonight at Noon and The Weight. He'll also reprise his Film Independent Spirit Award-nominated performance in the FX drama The Lowdown for its second season.
Conan O'Brien will host the Oscars live on Sunday, March 15, at 7 p.m. ET on ABC and Hulu. See the full list of nominees here.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
