An Evening with Ethan Hawke

The Coolidge is thrilled to announce legendary actor, filmmaker, producer, and author Ethan Hawke as the recipient of the 2025 Coolidge Award. 

Please join us for an onstage conversation with Hawke about his life and career. Jared Bowen, Emmy award-winning Executive Arts Editor and host of The Culture Show at GBH, will moderate. The conversation will include a tribute clip reel, and will be followed by the presentation of The Coolidge Award.

ABOUT ETHAN HAWKE 

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may" is a phrase a young Ethan Hawke took to heart while filming Dead Poets Society, the iconic film that launched his career. Over the past 30 years, Hawke has become a multifaceted, critically acclaimed artist—an actor, writer, director, producer, and best-selling novelist—earning four Academy Award nominations, both as an actor and a writer. 

As a filmmaker, he most recently directed and co-wrote Wildcat, a biopic about Flannery O’Connor starring Maya Hawke, Laura Linney, and Steve Zahn, released by Oscilloscope in 2023. The film was produced under his banner, Under the Influence Productions, which he founded with his wife and producing partner Ryan Hawke. Under the Influence also produced the six-part Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward docuseries The Last Movie Stars, directed by Hawke and produced by Martin Scorsese; and the acclaimed FX drama The Lowdown, which Hawke stars in and executive produces, reuniting with creator Sterlin Harjo following Hawke’s pivotal guest role in the penultimate episode of Harjo’s acclaimed series Reservation Dogs. As a filmmaker, Hawke’s directing credits also include the narrative features Chelsea Walls, The Hottest State, and Blaze and the documentary Seymour: An Introduction. 

His expansive onscreen filmography includes his Oscar-nominated performances in Training Day and Boyhood, his Independent Spirit and Gotham Award-winning performance in First Reformed, his multi-award-nominated and Peabody-winning work in Showtime’s limited series The Good Lord Bird, plus films such as Gattaca, Reality Bites, Maudie, The Northman, Sinister, The Purge, Leave the World Behind, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Great Expectations, White Fang, Marvel’s Moon Knight, Pedro Almodóvar’s short film Strange Way of Life and the celebrated Before trilogy (Before Sunrise and its sequels Before Sunset and Before Midnight), for which he received two writing Oscar nominations alongside his collaborators Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater. 

On stage, he received a Tony Award nomination for his performance in Tom Stoppard’s epic The Coast of Utopia, and also starred on Broadway in Henry IV, Macbeth, and Sam Shepard’s True West, in addition to countless Off-Broadway acting and directing credits. As a best-selling author, Hawke has written the novels The Hottest State, Ash Wednesday, A Bright Ray of Darkness, the children’s book Rules for a Knight, and two graphic novels, Meadowlark and Indeh, with illustrator Greg Ruth.

About Jared Bowen

Jared Bowen is the Emmy award-winning Executive Arts Editor and host of The Culture Show, a daily radio program and podcast at GBH exploring the creative process through a lively mix of local and national artist profiles, performances and exhibitions. 

Jared is a special correspondent for the PBS NewsHour and appears regularly on GBH 89.7, where he covers the latest happenings in the region’s theater, art, music, dance and film scenes on GBH’s Morning Edition and Boston Public Radio. 

He is also the moderator of the Boston Speakers Series at Symphony Hall, facilitating conversations with everyone from world leaders to Oscar-winning actors. He is a member of the Boston Theater Critics Association and is a Trustee of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. 

He has won four New England Emmy Awards and two Edward R. Murrow Awards for his arts reporting and is a recipient of the Commonwealth Award, recognizing achievement in the arts, humanities and sciences. He began his career at Dateline NBC in New York, is a graduate of Emerson College and holds an honorary doctorate from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.