Imagine Evil Fully, Then Leave It At Work
Total imagination without identification lets him play evil during the day and still be a father at night.
Last Podcast On The Left · Last Interview on the Left: Midnight Radio w/ Ethan Hawke & C. Robert CargillActor Ethan Hawke makes a living imagining terrible people, and he has a method for not bringing them home. He imagines the evil completely while he is working, then lets it pass through him.
He traces the lesson to playing Macbeth, the Shakespeare tragedy which he thinks is the original horror film. Hawke said performing that role that often for months can bring an actor to a dark place.
Hawke said of that run, “It can bring you to a really dark place that can leave you not fun to be near and not fun to wake up with in the morning for yourself.” So he began practicing full imagination without identification.
The model came from children. On Sinister, a horror film crowded with young actors, director Scott Derrickson treated scary scenes like a playful haunted house game, Hawke said. He described gatherings at 10 o'clock with friends, popcorn, and campfire stories meant to give listeners chills.
The children pictured the scares vividly yet held them lightly as play, without treating the fantasy as their own identity.
He used the same move on The Black Phone, in which he plays a masked man who enjoys harming children. He tried to think like a small child at play and fully picture being that kind of person, helped by strong writing and the strange power of the mask, then let the feeling move through him.
Then he stopped. He did not confuse the character with himself, and he went home to his own children and took them out for ice cream.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between imagining evil and identifying with it?
Imagination means picturing the thoughts and pleasures of a cruel person in detail while you work. Identification means deciding that those thoughts are yours, carrying them home, and waking up with them. Hawke tries to do the first without doing the second.
Would this work for anyone with a dark or stressful job?
No. Hawke describes only what helped him personally after Macbeth left him feeling low. It is not presented as medical advice, and anyone who feels stuck in dark thoughts should seek appropriate professional help.
What is The Black Phone about?
It is a horror film written by C. Robert Cargill and director Scott Derrickson, based on a Joe Hill story. Hawke plays the Grabber, a masked kidnapper who holds a boy in a basement with a disconnected phone that begins to ring.