Ethan Hawke is ready to scare you now: How the actor found freedom as a masked villain

Ethan Hawke is having a nice run.

He’s starring as the Grabber — the bad guy — in ''The Black Phone,” which comes out June 24. That’s no spoiler; we know from the start the Grabber is the villain, a serial killer of children. Thwarting him after he kidnaps Finney (Mason Thames) is what drives the film.

Hawke is appropriately terrifying, wearing a scary mask for much of the film. This falls after playing the villain in “Moon Knight,” the king in “The Northman” and John Brown in the acclaimed miniseries “The Good Lord Bird.”

Hawke spoke recently with The Arizona Republic about “The Black Phone” and the other roles he’s enjoyed. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

'People are just allowing me to be an actor'

Question: You’re on a tear, with a lot of good roles lately.

Answer: I’ve been enjoying this year. I’ve been enjoying the last few years. You know, it’s funny what I can say about that because you’re not supposed to comment on your own positive feelings you might have but I will say that I’ve always felt like a student of acting, and I like doing different kinds of movies.

Q: How has that progressed?

A: When you’re younger there’s a huge pressure on some idea of being a star, what you’re about to become. What I’ve always really wanted to be was an actor. And there’s something about getting older and people are just allowing me to be an actor and it’s feeling easier to move through space than it was when I was younger, to do lots of different things the way I like to.

Q: Could you have done that when you were younger?

A: I think a human being just has to walk through it. What’s the great line? It takes a lifetime to become who you’re trying to be. To shake off what’s fake, stop trying to please other people in the negative sense, but learn from experience, pick up positive things, lose some negative things. It happens slow, but you kind of keep shedding a skin. I think if you do it right, you slowly become more of yourself.

Wild thing: Ethan Hawke is great in 'The Good Lord Bird'

Why 'Good Lord Bird' and 'First Reformed' were breakthrough movies

Q: Was there a tipping point, a role that made you think that was finally happening?

A: Well, no sooner do you say that than you lose a foot or something. I’m very grateful to the cinema gods. You know, I’d say “Good Lord Bird” for me was a breakthrough of sorts. I loved the character. I loved the project. But it also was my first old-man part. It’s fun to start exploring that terrain.

And then this year getting to play “The Northman,” because I’ve played Hamlet, and now I get to play the dad, play the ghost, and to play a couple of villains, one for Marvel, one for (“The Black Phone” director) Scott Derrickson — it felt like I’m just going into a new door and I like the room I’m in.

Q: For me, that role for you was in “First Reformed.”

A: Yeah. “First Reformed” and “Good Lord Bird” are kind of connected for me. I did them one after another. Definitely. That was a breakthrough part for me.

Q: A lot of actors who play villains say they don’t think of them that way. They just play them as people.

A: My whole life I’ve used that line. For the Marvel project I would say you know, he’s not a villain. I would try to be my character’s lawyer. That was always my statement. “I see the world through his point of view and justify his reasoning.” But with the Grabber in “The Black Phone,” I don’t want to be that guy’s lawyer. That guy is the embodiment of Incubus. His soul is rotten to the core. No lawyer would take him.

Why wearing a mask in 'The Black Phone' was 'the opposite of limiting'

Q: When he talked to the boy he’s kidnapped he’s so matter of fact, but it’s terrifying. How do you balance that?

A: That’s the fun of what I do. It kind of sometimes feels like a dance. When the script is pushing hard one direction, sometimes it’s fun to push the other way, to expand the space it might take up.

Q: You wear that awful-looking mask a lot.

A: The mask did a lot of the work for me. I found that mask absolutely terrifying. Scott’s idea that the mask would constantly change — there were nine of them, each with subtle differences. It made me feel like I was playing hide-and-go-seek with the audience, and hide-and-go-seek with Finn, the character. It works to be terrifying, because the most mundane action, making a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, is terrifying if you have that mask on.

Q: You didn’t find the mask limiting?

A: I felt it the opposite of limiting. When I was younger I did a class in Greek theater, and they make you use these masks and you don’t get any tools that you normally use as an actor. It all becomes about voice and movement. It’s kind of exciting. But I can’t explain it, because I’m not an expert about it. I was just playing around with it. But I found it really enjoyable.

Why 'fear is not an emotion actors like to play'

Q: A movie set is not an inherently scary place. How do you make it that way?

A: One thing I love about young people, and doing scenes with kids if they’re talented, is their imagination is so immersive. They love to play pretend. And they’ll throw themselves at it and cry and kick and scream and laugh. It comes real naturally to young people. We learn to get afraid of that, because you can embarrass yourself.

But there’s something about working with young people, it becomes really easy to be playful. Because it comes easy to them, and you just have to access it yourself.

Q: Does that work for making it scary?

A: It can, yeah. Interestingly enough fear is not an emotion actors like to play. Actors like to be funny, they like to be sexy, they like to be tough, they like to be cool. But nobody enjoys playing scared. It’s a very vulnerable feeling to be afraid.

Q: Mason Thames pulls it off, though.

A: I found Mason particularly really game to go there and not try to be cool. And when somebody’s reacting to you, if you’re scaring somebody it actually makes you feel scary. That’s what I mean when I say it’s a dance.

Our set genuinely was creepy (laughs). So it wasn’t hard.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ethan Hawke is ready to scare you in 'The Black Phone': 'It's a dance'