Ethan Hawke is relieved he didn’t land the role of Jack Dawson in James Cameron’s iconic 1997 blockbuster, Titanic.
In a Monday interview with GQ to promote his new FX series The Lowdown, the actor, 54, said, “I don’t think I would have handled that success as well as Leo,” remarking, “he was a f—ing Beatle.”
Leonardo DiCaprio became a household name after securing the lead role in the film at just 22. Upon the film’s release, DiCaprio, now 50, was adored by young girls in the fashion of Beatle fan worship, a phenomenon that was coined “Leo-mania.”
“I have no connection with me during that whole Titanic phenomenon and what my face became around the world,” DiCaprio told Time in 2000. The intense attention he experienced immediately after the film is “not something I’m going to try to achieve either,” he added.
Hawke wasn’t the only current Hollywood star who tried and failed to snag the role of Jack. Dallas Buyers Club‘s Matthew McConaughey was turned away from Cameron’s film after he refused to say his lines without his signature Texas drawl.
Cameron’s iconic 1997 movie went on to win 11 Oscars without Hawke and became the highest-grossing film of all time until Cameron’s next film, Avatar, surpassed it.
Hawke, who got his big break with his starring role in the 1989 film Dead Poets Society, told the magazine that, in retrospect, he is glad that he escaped the treacherous limelight of mainstream Hollywood success. Instead, Hawke leaned into other creative pursuits, eventually becoming a novelist, playwright, and working on low-budget slow films, including Boyhood, with director Richard Linklater.
Hawke’s distaste for tabloid coverage grew as he faced public scrutiny during his marriage to Uma Thurman, 55, from 1998 to 2005. “It’s humiliating. It’s almost humiliating even when they’re saying positive things,” he said of the 2000s tabloid headlines.
“He had none of the trappings of a Hollywood star. He was a beatnik,” Linklater said of Hawke to GQ, stating that it was only because Hawke was not a “careerist” that he was willing to take on indie films like Linklater’s Before Sunrise.
“I never self-identified as a ‘movie star.’ I was allergic to that,” Hawke told the outlet. “Having a trademark by my name and making a million dollars—that wasn’t part of my dream.”
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