Ethan Hawke

Hawke was born on November 6, 1970 to Leslie (née Green), a charity worker, and James Hawke, an insurance actuary. Hawke's parents were high school sweethearts in Fort Worth, Texas, and married young, when Hawke's mother was 17. Hawke was born a year later. Hawke's parents were both students at the University of Texas at Austin at the time of his birth. They separated and later divorced in 1974, when he was four years old.

After the separation, Hawke was raised by his mother. The two relocated several times, before settling in New York City, where Hawke attended the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights. Hawke's mother remarried when he was 10 and the family moved to West Windsor Township, New Jersey. There, Hawke attended the public West Windsor Plainsboro High School (renamed to West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South in 1997). He later transferred to the Hun School of Princeton, a secondary boarding school, from which he graduated in 1988.

In high school, Hawke aspired to be a writer, but developed an interest in acting. He made his stage debut at age 13, in a production at the McCarter Theatre of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan. He also performed in West Windsor-Plainsboro High School productions of Meet Me in St. Louis and You Can't Take It with You. At the Hun School, he took acting classes at the McCarter Theatre, located on the Princeton campus. After graduation from high school, he studied acting at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, dropping out after he was cast in Dead Poets Society (1989). He enrolled in New York University's English program for two years, but dropped out to pursue other acting roles.