Ethan Hawke Is Always In Style

He has an uncanny ability to Embody the pivotal points in a man’s life: from high school ( Dead Poets Society ), through first love ( Before Sunrise ) and fatherhood ( Boyhood ), and into middle age (his newest film, First Reformed ). Who better to take fall’s flyest designer fashions and show us how to join the era of wild style while still looking like a grown-up?

- Zach Baron

ETHAN HAWKE WALKS INTO THE ODEON, the Tribeca restaurant that was a mecca for the literary world in the ’80s, and says the most earnest, Ethan Hawke–ish thing: “I always think of Bright Lights, Big City. Like I’m about to go in the bathroom and do lines with Bret Easton Ellis.” At 47, he has a taut and sharply creased face, but his eyes have the same mischievous glint of his youth. Hawke has been acting since 1985, and though his career has had its peaks and valleys, we are unquestionably at a peak right now. In May he gave an incredible performance as a morally conflicted reverend in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. This month he stars in Juliet, Naked, as an aging rock musician, and next month will see Blaze, the dreamy, impressionistic movie Hawke directed about the forgotten country singer Blaze Foley. He tells me he made the latter movie in part because he’s always been fascinated with people who choose obscurity over fame. He’s never been able to do that himself. ¶ So here he is instead: older but undaunted, somehow still getting better at the work. He looks around the Odeon again, sees the hostess, and leans in, as if to share a confidence. “I think our maître d’ is my daughter’s best friend from high school,” he says quietly. “It’s a strange moment in a man’s life when you come into the Odeon feeling like a hipster and the maître d’ is friends with your daughter.”