Ethan Hawke is reflecting on the struggle his late pal River Phoenix went through before his tragic death at 23 in 1993.
Hawke and Phoenix became pals on the set of Joe Dante's Explorers in 1985. Phoenix went on to star in critically acclaimed films like Stand by Me, My Own Private Idaho, and Running on Empty.
Hawke talked about River while showing his new project Blue Moon at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
The Purge star noted that Phoenix was met "with success much earlier than I was," due to his role in Rob Reiner's movie 186 film Stand by Me, which "launched this huge career at an extremely young age."
He shared that the Academy Award nominee, who died of combined drug overdose of cocaine and heroine, was "vibrating off of how phony that was, whenever you're getting a lot of accolades and you're not even in control of your own art."
"People are trying to make money off you [and] if you're self-aware at all, you understand how dangerous that is," he explained.
But Hawke argued that it also "led him to do the best work of his short life with Gus Van Sant." The Black Phone star was referring to My Own Private Idaho.
"He was punk rock as an actor when he took that job," Ethan Hawke continued. "That was a really dangerous job for him to take — a gay hustler for a teen idol — and he was brilliant in that."