Flying out of his comfort zone
Ethan Hawke takes on challenging role of an abusive husband
Initially, Ethan Hawke thought he would enjoy a busman’s holiday portraying the husband of Nova Scotia artist Maud Lewis in the Aisling Walsh-directed biopic Maudie.
The four-time Academy Award nominated actor has a summer home on a Gulf of St. Lawrence island east of Antigonish, N.S., so he was excited by the prospect of mixing business with pleasure.
As circumstances and film subsidies would have it, the Maudie cast and crew ended up filming the movie in and around St. John’s, N.L.
“They tricked me,” jokes Hawke in Toronto to shoot the crime thriller Stockholm. “I just assumed we would be filming Maudie around Halifax, but I loved it in Newfoundland — it’s so raw and wild in the best way possible.”
So is the film profiling Maudie (Sally Hawkins), the arthritic loner in Depression era Nova Scotia. In the movie and in real life, she endures a harsh life and abuse from her gruff husband Everett (Hawke) but still manages to create uncomplicated yet popular pieces of art.
While Hawke had a vague idea of Lewis’ background — “I had taken my kids to a Halifax exhibit of her art work” — he was more enthralled by the opportunity to tell a story from his adopted home away from home.
“Nova Scotia has been a part of my life for a long time,” he says. “I love it up there so much. To make a movie which studies that world, and the people who live there, was important to me.”
It helped, too, that Hawkins had already been cast as Maudie. Hawke admits he has been a fan since her acclaimed performance in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky.
“I was reacting to the screenplay by picturing Sally playing the role,” says Hawke. “I had done the same thing with Training Day because I knew Denzel (Washington) would be doing his thing in that movie.”
On set, Hawkins and Hawke connected from the start mostly because they respected each other and had the same straightforward approach to performance.
“I have worked with great and powerful actors but I’ve never met anybody more powerful than Sally,” he says of Hawkins. “She’s small and delicate but she’s a fierce artist, and goes about her business with humility and kindness.”
Certainly, Hawke needed all the support he could muster, portraying a terse and cranky man who hires Maud first as his housekeeper before marrying her.
“It’s rare that I get to play somebody who is abusive but learns to love,” says the actor. “I really had to push myself and get out of my comfort zone, but it’s a good way to keep feeling excited about what you’re attempting.”
He also relied on the familiarity of what he had seen and heard during his many trips to Nova Scotia with his kids. “I had spent many of my summers with lobster fishermen and met a ton of guys that are stoic like Everett, so I basically channelled what I saw over the years.”
But the irony of the Maudie cinematic effort is not lost on Hawke; an American actor joining an English actress collaborating with an Irish director (Walsh) to tell a Canadian yarn written at least by a Canuck (Sherry White.)
“When you’re from an area sometimes it is difficult to see what’s poetic about the stories you hear so much about,” he says. “Usually people from other parts of the world find it infinitely more interesting.”
Meanwhile, Stockholm should be another film test for Hawke, who is reuniting with his Born
to be Blue director Robert Budreau.
The Budreau production is the retelling of a botched 1973 Stockholm bank robbery in which subsequent hostages bonded with their captors and turned against the authorities. The incident led to the coining of the phrase the Stockholm Syndrome.
“It’s a bizarre story,” Hawke says. “I can’t wait to get into it.”