'It changed my life': Ethan Hawke on his role in tense 2001 drama Tape

The Hollywood star played a drug dealer in this dark, claustrophobic thriller. For the BBC's Close Up Film series, he reflects on the surprising part that means the most to him in his career.

The painfully shy schoolboy who finds his voice in Dead Poets Society. The cynical musician in Reality Bites, which made him a poster boy for Generation X. The doubt-filled alcoholic priest of First Reformed. And the brilliant but wounded lyricist Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon, which gave him his first best actor Oscar nomination at the age of 54.

They are among the many roles that Ethan Hawke has played during a 40-year acting career, and this week sees the UK release of his latest film, The Weight, an adventure drama set during the Great Depression. Hawke plays a convict, Murphy, who strikes a deal to smuggle gold through the Oregon wilderness in exchange for being freed from a labour camp.

But when asked to name the film role that has been most significant to him, he chooses a surprising film from his extensive CV.

"If I had to pick a film role that changed my life, it would be Tape," Hawke tells the BBC, referring to the low-budget claustrophobic 2001 drama he made with his regular collaborator, director Richard Linklater.

A career turning point

"I would say that film was my entrance to adult acting. I was about to turn 30 years old, so I was becoming a grown up. And it was when digital video was a brand new technology. Linklater and I were really excited about how this new form was going to change movies. We went and made this really simple film which takes place inside one motel room."

Shot in six days using handheld digital-video cameras, the 86-minute film stars Hawke, his then wife Uma Thurman and his Dead Poets Society co-star Robert Sean Leonard. Hawke plays Vince, a part-time drug dealer who secretly records an old friend, film-maker Jon (Leonard), confessing to raping Amy (Thurman), a former classmate once involved with both men. When Amy arrives at the motel where Vince and Jon have met up, their competing accounts of the past unravel.

Visually, the film is an unsettling experience, as the cameras prowl around the room, making the viewer feel trapped in the space with the characters.

"We got to work in a very different way than we'd ever done before because of the way these cameras worked," Hawke says. "There was no laziness. No one really wants to see a film set in one room. We knew we had to be laser sharp, precise and funny."

He adds that the existing intimacy between himself, Thurman and Leonard gave momentum to the process. 

"The three of us were friends, and it allowed the rehearsal process to get deep very quickly," he says. "Every film has an interesting subconscious, and Linklater thought there was a subtext in myself and Robert Sean Leonard having famously played........

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