Ethan Hawke wanted to become a boxer after seeing Rocky: “I got my ass kicked”
Movies can wield a powerful influence. They can push us to try new things, challenge the way we see the world, and in some cases, even inspire an entirely new career path. Of course, that kind of inspiration doesn’t always pan out — as Ethan Hawke recently admitted to Sydney Sweeney during Variety’s Actors on Actors, recalling how watching Rocky once convinced him that becoming a boxer was an excellent idea.
Ethan Hawke on Rocky
“I saw Rocky and I decided I wanted to be a boxer,” Hawke said. “I took boxing lessons. I got one fight — and I didn’t like boxing anymore. I got my ass kicked. I felt like I was a pretty good defensive boxer, but the guy was punching my hands so hard that I was hitting myself. I dropped it. I did not like losing.“
Sweeney asked Hawke how long he had trained for this one fight. “Six months or something,” Hawke responded. “You fared better than I did.”
Hawke Watched Sydney Sweeney’s Christy
Sweeney recently played professional boxer Christy Martin in Christy, a sports biopic that unfortunately flopped at the box office. Hawke told Sweeney that he watched Christy with his teenage daughter.
“My 17-year-old has absolutely zero interest in me whatsoever. She texts me, ‘What are you doing tonight?’ Clearly, her friends abandoned her. I was like, ‘My daughter’s asking me to go to a movie. I’m doing this.’ I text her, ”What do you wanna see?’ And she says, ‘I wanna see that new Sydney Sweeney movie.’ I’m like, ‘Christy? On it,’” he explained. “I get us tickets to the Alamo. We order a couple Impossible Burgers and we have one of the best nights we’ve had in a long time. She’s like, ‘This is what you don’t understand. This woman is the best fighter in the United States of America, and it’s still virtually impossible to get out of a toxic relationship. That’s what so many women are up against, Dad.’ We had such a great conversation. She wanted me to tell you she’s really glad you told that story.“
Has a Movie Ever Inspired You To Try Something New?
I was five years old when I first saw Star Wars, and from that moment on, I wanted to be Han Solo more than anything. In my young mind, being a space smuggler felt like a perfectly viable career path. I even built the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon in my backyard out of cardboard boxes, with broken circuit boards serving as a makeshift control panel. Like Hawke, my dream didn’t last long as it was unceremoniously destroyed by the first rainfall, which reduced my Falcon to a soggy pile of cardboard mush.
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