Early on, actor Adam Scott thought he should have a career like fellow star Ethan Hawke. The actor admitted to being inspired to emulate Hawke during his early days in Hollywood, going so far as to dress and cut his hair like the star.
“If you saw me in, like, 1994, when I was starting out, I was looking at pictures of Ethan Hawke and just being like, ‘OK, this is what I need to do. My hair, my jacket,’” Scott told THR. “I mean, Ethan Hawke was and is so cool. So of course that’s what I wanted to be.”
Scott was alongside Walton Goggins, Cooper Koch, Diego Luna, Eddie Redmayne, and Jeffrey Wright for the annual Drama Actor Emmy Roundtable. Scott is in the Emmy running for his turn in “Severance” Season 2. It took years for Scott to embrace his own unique acting stardom, rather than try to adopt Hawke’s onscreen persona.
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“I was chasing and trying to be this thing, and it took me years to realize that the only thing you have is you, and you’re the only one that can bring that to it. And coming to a place of being comfortable with that and thinking that is of any value [takes a long time],” he said. “I think it goes back to what we were talking about, which is just don’t worry about what you feel you need to push yourself to be, what you have is already there. At the same time, I feel like, to a certain extent, that’s something that is lived and you have to come to in your own way. Part of it is, I’m 52 and, like Walton [Goggins], I’ve been here for 30 years.”
He reiterated, “When I was starting out, I wanted to be Ethan Hawke and Stephen Dorff and whatever was happening at the time, and with age and experience, you come to a place of accepting yourself and what you have to offer. And I’m just so grateful that I didn’t end up getting ‘Scream 2’ or ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ or any of the stuff that I auditioned for. And I auditioned for it all. I would’ve squandered it. I wasn’t ready.”
Scott also offered some advice to his fellow actors during the THR roundtable. “The thing that I came to eventually was that the things that ended up making any difference in my career were the choices I made for reasons other than career,” he said. “It was the choices I made because it was something that I wanted to do because I thought it would be fun or it was with my friends or I just loved the material, and I was never even thinking about career and how it could help me along. Whenever I make a decision for any reason other than that, it goes sideways.”
Scott previously admitted that he could understand why Apple thought it was a risk for him to be cast as the lead in “Severance” at the time. “I couldn’t really blame [Apple] at the time,” Scott said of the streamer’s apparent apprehension to his casting. “I was thought of as more of a comedic person, and it’s a big swing.”
Scott added that series executive producer and director Ben Stiller advocated for him to play Mark in the series. “I’ve never experienced anything like that before in show business. No one’s ever stuck their neck out for me like that,” Scott said.
