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Zitat

After more than 30 years of acting, can you remember when you first knew you wanted to do this for a living?
There was this place called the Paul Robeson Center for Performing Arts in Princeton, New Jersey. When I was 12 or 13, I didn’t have a winter
sport so my mother signed me up for acting classes. One day, the head of the McCarter Theater came in to do an improv workshop. When it
was over, he asked, “Would you like to be in a play? We’re doing George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan.” I had no idea who George Bernard Shaw
was, but I did the play. It was so much fun to listen to the actors rehearse. I’d listen to my parents around the dinner table for years talking
about how much they hated their jobs. For them, life started when work ended. And I was in that rehearsal room and I just couldn’t believe
acting was a job. So that was the start. And then through a friend of a friend, I found out about some auditions in New York, so I started
going on open calls.

How did you get cast in Explorers?
Joe Dante had just directed Gremlins, which was a big hit, and they were doing casting calls throughout the country for Explorers. I was still
living in New Jersey, but I would take the train into New York. My mother let me go as long as it didn’t cost her anything. [Laughs] I didn’t
have a head shot, so my buddy Brandon would do a Polaroid of me. I got called back for the Explorers screen test and they made me sign a
deal memo. It never occurred to my mom that I would actually get a part! I mean, we were nobody, you know? So we flew to Los Angeles.

Was River cast at this point?
No, I met him at the screen test. It was all these young kids, and more than one of whom are deceased now. Be warned about childhood
acting. It has to be done just right. It’s really tough. We stayed at the Holiday Inn and I remember eating on the roof with [actor] Peter
Billingsley from A Christmas Story. He auditioned too. He was a really nice kid. In my mind, he was a huge star. When he got his tongue
stuck to the pole? I was like, “Dude, you were amazing in that! Poor Peter was beat out by River for the role. It’s weird to talk about
River now. It’s still hard for me not to think about how great he would’ve been in a role like this one in Born to Be Blue; how wonderful
it would’ve been to see more performances; what he would’ve accomplished as an adult. And how tough it is navigating the incredibly
rocky terrain of our emotional landscapes.

Why do you think you escaped the pratfalls that have claimed River’s and so many other young actors’ lives? What choices did you
make that saved you from being another child-actor casualty?
Well, one of them was to not shoot heroin. If there was a big book full of all the people who wanted to have a substantive life in the
arts, and you went through the list of people who didn’t live up to what they wanted for themselves, and then crossed out the names
of everyone who ultimately self-destructed, you’d be left with very few people. If you can just tell yourself, “All I’m going to do is not
self-destruct,” your chances of achieving what you want to go up exponentially.

It’s also very difficult for some to resist the notion that real artists live in their heads; that being tortured is simply inherent to the
artist’s life.
Yes, but it’s not just artists who feel that way; they just tend to do it with a particular flair. Everyone struggles with drugs and alcohol.
Everyone is navigating their own insecurities, pain, and disappointment. The use of drugs becomes, “If I can just deal with this thing
I’ve put in front of myself so I don’t have to deal with the larger questions like, am I talented? Do I have something to offer? Does the
art have something to offer? Why am I living? Why am I dying?” The questions that cause all of us anxiety. I remember Robin Williams
once telling me that he thought cocaine is what made him funny. He didn’t realize that he was funny without the coke.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/03/ethan-haw…ng-showbiz.html