| "They really set a different kind of example for the students," says Rohrberg Wilson of the visiting professionals. "They have a whole different way of working as far as focus and concentration and discipline are concerned." Hawkes will receive about $1,000 for his work at TLD, which he plans to donate to the theater. The students receive $100 per week for their ten-week internship plus room and board. "This was a resort at one time," Rohrberg Wilson explains. "There's a large kitchen in the lodge which also has an upstairs rehearsal space. Several cabins were divided into smaller units that house the student company. Artistic staff, costume and lighting designers, administrators and family members can all stay here, but no one has a lake view!" But working at TLD offers other benefits compared to, say, film. "When you do a play, you have audience response, which is great to play off," explains Hawkes. "Also, your audience is in a fixed position. In film, the audience might be two feet from you or fifty feet from you, which effects how loud you need to be, or how subtle." Hawkes has extensive theatrical experience, having made a living as a theater actor in Austin, Texas before moving to Hollywood. He wrote Nimrod Soul, a one-man show that enjoyed its first and only run on two dark nights (Monday and Tuesday) at TLD a half dozen years ago. As Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey, he rolls his hat nimbly down his arm, immensely likeable but quietly keen-eyed and judgmental at the same time. He shares the stage generously with his fellow actors, yielding gracefully to Kim Schultz as Veta, who gets the only spontaneous burst of applause during one performance. "I don't think of one audience as needing a play more than another," Hawkes says of Harvey's lesson about embracing non-conformity. "You choose something and people either get it or they don't." He takes the production very seriously, nonetheless. "On some level, I have a lot to lose. This is my town, this production is being publicized, skeptics might come and say that I'm no better than anybody else. That's fine, but I want the play to be great. I want to shine in front of my family and friends even more than when I'm in New York and there's a professional theater critic sitting in the audience. On some level, this is more precious and important to me." If it sounds like working at TLD is a slightly nerve-wracking dream come true for the actor, it's not his first. Hawkes appeared in the famous live episode of E.R. "I always wanted to do live television," he admits. "I love Marty and Requiem for a Heavyweight and all those old Playhouse 90 productions. So it was a great twist of fate to be able to do the live episode of E.R." Did he notice anything about the E.R. regulars during the experience? "Fear! It was live, anything could have happened. It was like theater for twenty million people. When you're doing regular television or a movie, there's an editor who takes what you hope is your best work and puts it together. In a live broadcast, the pressure is on to have everything be perfect. It was exciting, being with Julianna Margulies in the very first scene that came up, knees knocking, watching the countdown, five, four, three, two..." His guest appearance on The X-Files may be his best-known. "What's different about that show is, they really take their time," Hawkes marvels. "People on the crew all seemed relaxed, knowing they were part of something really good. They had a lot of pride in their work and knew each department was going to be given the time and money to do the job right." In Hardball, due out September 14, he plays Ticky, a "ticket-scalping, gambling, urban Chicago wild guy" whose best friend, played by Keanu Reeves, gets stuck coaching an inner-city little league baseball team to pay off a gambling debt. "Like any good friend, I give him bad advice and discourage him at every turn," Hawkes grins. "It's a really good script in that it's not overly sentimental; hopefully the music won't make it that way." Music is something else Hawkes knows a little about. He and his cousin, Mike Lutgen, formed a band several years ago along with Hawkes' girlfriend at the time. "We were super low profile, playing parties, stuff like that," he remembers. Eventually, the girlfriend moved to New York and the band changed names, to 'Gangster Folk.' "We've recorded some things and we're trying to put out a CD. But it takes time to get everything mixed and do the art work, and Mike, who is an amazing musician, has moved back to Minnesota; his future may lie outside Gangster Folk. It would be great to be able to tour, but being gone eight months out of twelve, it's difficult to do that kind of thing." Hawkes says paying rent for an apartment he only occupies four months out of the year is fairly typical for him. "In the last few months I've worked in England, Canada, and L.A. You end up all over. "When I started out in Hollywood, I did just about anything I was fortunate enough to be asked to do," he says of the process of building a career. "I failed in things that weren't too high profile and learned from it. But you get to a point where, if you want to earn a better living and be offered better parts, or have more choices about how you do your work, you have to start saying no to things. Otherwise you'll be viewed as someone who will do any job for a small amount of money. I still don't get all the jobs I want but I'm comfortable enough that I don't have to do things I don't want to anymore. My goal is to support my parents and myself and whoever else, if I get married or have kids, that kind of thing." Hawkes' parents separated when he was young. His mother resides in Alexandria, his father in Austin, Texas. Hawkes tries to visit both cities a couple of times each year. He also has a brother, Scott, and two sisters (Teri and Lori), all of whom have made him an uncle. "I'm not from money, by any means. My mom did office work and my father was a farmer, among other things. Farming is not lucrative. So I'd like to help out, because I want them to be comfortable." As for the potential negative impact his movie stardom could have on his family, Hawkes isn't worried. "My favorite actor is Robert Duvall, and he's able to have dinner without anybody bothering him. I never see him in the headlines of the National Enquirer." One place Hawkes has achieved notoriety is the internet, where he has two fan pages created by admiring private citizens. "I'm flattered that two people have chosen to make fan sites about me," he admits. "It's a little creepy in a way but through the slight communication I've had with the two people who made them, I've found that they seem like normal people who are respectable and who are trying to tell the world about an artist that they admire and want people to know about. That's wonderful! But I don't really like the idea of technology that creates more of a homebound or cocoon culture. It replaces people being together in groups and that makes me sad. I don't think computers are making our lives better, just faster." Inaccuracy also bothers him. "There are tons of falsehoods on the internet that people take as true, and that really bothers me. High profile, supposedly accurate sites like IMDB [www.imdb.com, the internet movie database, which provides extensive filmographies on professional actors] have things about me that are completely wrong. They list things I wasn't in, then casting directors or executives see them and think, 'He was in that cheesy movie of the week last year?'" So what's it like for the Hollywood actor, treading the boards with the student thespians after years in front of the camera? While Hawkes is thrilled to be in a traditional theatrical production for the first time in more than a dozen years, he does not share the attitude that theater is superior to film and television. "Sometimes there's a stigma that film and television are less legitimate art forms. It's like San Francisco and New York hating Los Angeles while Los Angeles loves both places." Nor does he see himself as the experienced star brought in to educate the student performers. "I learn a lot from whoever I work with on any level. I just relate to them as human beings and fellow actors and I think they relate to me the same way. The student company here works unbelievably hard. Amazingly hard." Back to Part 1 |
