Ethan Hawke thinks casting actors based on their social media following is 'crazy'
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By Lisa Respers France, CNN
(CNN) — It sounds like Ethan Hawke is aware that “Reality Bites” for today’s performers.
At the Berlin Film Festival this week, the 54-year-old actor was asked if he was familiar with his daughter Maya Hawke’s recent comments about casting actors based on whether they have a large Instagram following.
“I’m talking about deleting my Instagram and [some directors are] like, ‘Just so you know when I’m casting a movie with some producers, they hand me a sheet with the amount of collective followers I have to get from the cast,’” the younger Hawke said during a recent episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast. “‘So if you delete your Instagram and I lose those followers, understand these are the kinds of people I need to cast around you.’”
According to Variety, her father said he found that hiring consideration to be “crazy.”
“I really feel for these people. It’s really hard,” Hawke said. “Sometimes I’ll be setting a movie up and someone will say, ‘Oh, you should cast Suzie.’ I’m like, ‘Who is she?’ ‘She has 10 million followers.’ I’m like, ‘OK cool, has she acted before?’ ‘No, but…’ And you’re like, ‘Wow, so this is going to help me get the movie made? This is crazy.’”
The older Hawke was at the Berlin festival to premiere his latest collaboration with Richard Linklater, “Blue Moon.”
Hawke said he’s encountered “so many young actors that think being an actor is protein shakes and going to the gym.”
He said his actress daughter, who appears in “Stranger Things” and voiced Anxiety in “Inside Out 2,” has taught him a great deal about social media.
“She’s like, ‘Dad, you need an Instagram account… That was a terrible post Dad, get rid of it,’” Hawke joked.
“But she’s an artist, my daughter. You can’t stop her,” he added. “She’s always creative: painting, singing, writing music, acting. I don’t worry about her, she’ll figure that out. But I learn a lot from her now.”
The-CNN-Wire
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