Ethan Hawke Recalls the Role He Wishes He Could 'Go Back in Time' and Take from Former Rival Billy Crudup
- - Ethan Hawke Recalls the Role He Wishes He Could 'Go Back in Time' and Take from Former Rival Billy Crudup
Virginia ChamleeFebruary 9, 2026 at 8:00 PM
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Billy Crudup, Ethan Hawke
Jason Mendez/Getty; Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
Ethan Hawke is sharing that Billy Crudup is now a friend — but that wasn't always the case when the two were young actors
In a new interview, Hawke said the two "used to audition" for all the same roles
In some cases, Hawke said he could hear Crudup's audition from the next room
Ethan Hawke says that, as a young actor, he was often facing off against a now-friend for roles: Billy Crudup.
Speaking to Jimmy Fallon in the Wednesday, Feb. 4 episode of The Tonight Show, the 55-year-old actor shared that Crudup "happens to be a friend of mine — but not at first."
"Because we used to go up — we used to audition for everything [together]," Hawke said of he and Crudup, now 57. "And you know when you're a kid, you think you're against everybody, right? You don't understand that there's room for everybody to find themselves, to do their thing."
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Ethan Hawke, Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show
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Hawke continued: "So I would see him at every audition. I'd often have to be outside the room, and listen to him do the scene before me. And he was so good. It was so irritating."
"In fact, I was offered a play once — I think he knows this — and I had to say no to it, because I was doing a movie," Hawke recounted. "It was a Tom Stoppard play. And they gave him the part, and then his career blew up."
Hawke added, jokingly: "And sometimes, I just want to go back in time, take the part, to stop his career."
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Crudup starred in the 1995 Broadway debut of Stoppard's play Arcadia as Septimus Hodge, later returning to the play's 2011 revival as a different character, Bernard Nightingale.
Crudup and Hawke starred alongside one another in the 2006 Stoppard trilogy of plays,The Coast of Utopia. Both actors were nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for their roles and Crudup ultimately won the award.
Hawke recently earned his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his role as lyricist Lorenz Hart in the 2025 Richard Linklater film Blue Moon. Hawke was previously nominated for Oscars in other categories, including Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
