Now he’s 47, but when he was much younger, Ethan Hawke read “Cassavetes on Cassavetes,” the indie filmmaker bible, and then went to hear the author’s widow, Gena Rowlands, speak. She looked out at the crowd and laughed. She said John Cassavetes was always disappointed because nobody would finance his movies; he’d always felt dismissed and disregarded. “‘And now here you guys are making a big deal out of him,’” he remembered her saying. She said that was nice, but that they shouldn’t miss the point. “‘Make a big deal of yourself.’ You know? Whatever indifference the world gives you, he felt it, too. So you’re just as good as he is. Like, go out and do it.”

Mr. Hawke found that so moving, the idea of ignoring what the world was telling you about yourself and instead living only by standards that you had, yourself, carefully defined for your life and work. He vowed right then that he would do whatever it took to make good art on his own terms, no matter what anyone said. He would take himself seriously, even if no one else did.

He’d had his first starring role by then — in “Explorers,” when he was 14. By the time he was 20, he’d already starred in “White Fang” and “Dead Poets Society.” But he didn’t just want to be a movie star. He started a theater company in 1991 called Malaparte with his friends, but the world didn’t quite know how to react to his kaleidoscope ambitions. He debuted on Broadway in 1992 in “The Seagull,” and The New York Times said he played Konstantin with an “arm-waving display of unfocused nervous energy.” Variety determined that he gave the “single truly ineffective performance” in 2003’s “Henry IV”: “Movie actor Ethan Hawke is simply out of his depth.” Movie actor! The Chicago Tribune said his Macbeth in 2013 was a “tragic hero without drive.” I can’t even bear to print what The New York Post said about his “Clive” that very same year.