TORONTO - A weary Ethan Hawke tried to find his seat at a Four Seasons Hotel interview room yesterday morning.
After a quick scan he realized his chair might be the one with all the microphones on the table in front of it.
"Is this where I sit?" he asked, smiling through his 9 a.m haze, knowing the answer as he took his place.
Hawke was tired for good reason.
Hours earlier he had been reviewing the positive reaction to the Toronto International Film Festival gala screening of Snow Falling On Cedars.
It's the much-anticipated Scott Hicks movie version of the David Guterson international best seller, which sold more than four million copies and was translated into 30 languages after its 1995 release.
Hicks and veteran writer Ron Bass shaped the screenplay from the complex multi-layered novel, which stars Hawke and features James Cromwell, Richard Jenkins, James Rebhorn, Youki Kudoh, Rick Yune and Max Von Sydow.
The film, like the book, mostly cuts to and from a 1950s murder trial, to war recollections, to the plight of the Japanese-Americans thrown into internment camps during WWII. It combines elements of a love story, thriller and docu-drama.
Hawke plays a reporter covering the murder trial, and so far has been getting decent notices for his performance. In fact, the picture will get its major release at the end of the year to qualify for Oscars, but when an Academy Award nomination possibility was suggested to Hawke as he waited for his coffee to kick in, he shrugged off the notion.
"I like the movie," the 27-year-old New Yorker said. "I want it to be noticed, but that's about it."
In other words, don't confuse him with a Hollywood movie industry kind of guy.
Never was, although he's had roles in big features such as Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams, Reality Bites with Winona Ryder, The Newton Boys with Matthew McConaughey and Great Expectations with Gwyneth Paltrow.
Let's not forget Gattaca, with his wife Uma Thurman, who is currently shooting a James Ivory film in London and will not be able to attend the festival. She is in Woody Allen's Sweet And Lowdown, which is also in the film festival mid-week.
Despite his resume, Hawke rejected any sort of insider definition.
"I'm like the last guy to ask," he said, referring to whether Snow Falling On Cedars will be worthy of Oscars. "I don't like it. It turns every thing into a game."
He did commend Shine director Hicks for giving Snow Falling On Cedars "a mysterious, rich and deep, and subtle poetic quality."
Perhaps Hawke was cautious about being optimistic about Snow Falling On Cedars, because of his past disappointments. For instance, he thought his war movie A Midnight Clear would do better than it did. And the lacklustre moviegoer response to the sci-fi feature Gattaca was another lesson in coping with dashed expectations.
"Over the past year, Gattaca is what people seem to ask me about the most," he said, referring to the Andrew Niccol film, which was praised but ignored. "It was the classic example of a studio not knowing what to do with an art film."
Such is life in the movies. Hawke appreciates that. He has to, especially if he wants an acting career with longevity. And he said he did.
"I think you get more interesting as you get older, and have more experiences," he said.
And then, when you get too old?
"Yes," Hawke said quickly, "you disappear."
And then?
"And then," he said, finally alert and full of caffeine, "you die."
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