Ethan Hawke has opened up about the role that made audiences confuse him with his character—and hate him.
Speaking with Tracy Smith on CBS News Sunday Morning, the actor revealed that after his 1994 portrayal of Troy Dyer in Reality Bites, people approached him and told him they hated him.
“I don’t know why that guy got under people’s skin,” Hawke, 55, told Smith, adding that his character was a ’90s “too cool for school” hipster, but that he was also intelligent and funny.
“But he was arrogant and self-satisfied...so I understood,” the Oscar-nominated actor said about people’s reaction.
The Ben Stiller–directed romantic comedy-drama starred Hawke and Stiller, 60, alongside Winona Ryder, 54, who now stars with Hawke’s daughter, Maya Hawke, 27, in the Netflix hit series Stranger Things.
Reality Bites followed Gen X college graduates in Houston as they navigated life, with Hawke’s character portrayed as a love-hate interest for Ryder’s character and a musician who can’t hold down a steady job.
“It was just my job to play him,” Hawke said about his character, adding that he tried not to take any of the criticism personally.
The character of Troy Dyer not only brought hateful comments to the actor who played him, but also led to a lawsuit against the film’s writer, Helen Childress.
The real Troy Dyer, with whom Childress attended film school, sued following the 2005 release of a Tenth Anniversary Edition DVD, after Childress allegedly stated that the film’s characters were based on her friends from school.
The lawsuit was settled when Childress released a statement asserting that the characters are entirely fictitious.
In 2024, Hawke told People that there was a time that his portrayal in Reality Bites annoyed him, as he feared it was “prohibitive of growing up” by cementing him as a Gen X star—but he added that he now “kind of” loves it.
Hawke decided to act in the 1994 film because Ryder convinced him that Stiller was a great comedian. “I still resisted: Who wants to watch a movie about four whining white people, none of whom I like?” he told Rolling Stone.
“And then everyone thought I was that a-----e for years!” Hawke recalled.
