Ethan Hawke Says Filmmaker Peter Weir Retired After Johnny Depp 'Broke Him'

Ethan Hawke believes director Peter Weir retired because of bad experiences working with Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp.

Weir has not made a movie since 2010's The Way Back—and Hawke alleges that working alongside Crowe and Deep in the preceding decade turned the Oscar-nominated director off the film industry.

Hawke discussed the Australian filmmaker during an interview to promote his new HBO docuseries The Last Movie Stars, which is about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Alongside Hawke, the series features contributions from Martin Scorsese, George Clooney, Sally Field, Laura Linney and more.

"I think [Weir] lost interest in movies," Hawke told IndieWire about the man who had directed him in Dead Poets Society. "He really enjoyed that work when he didn't have actors giving him a hard time. Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp broke him."

Weir directed Crowe in the Oscar-winning drama Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World in 2003. After that project, he was due to direct Shantaram with Johnny Depp in a leading role, but Weir left the project before production started in 2007.

Hawke was a teenager when he made Dead Poet's Society, the movie that kickstarted his career.

"He's someone so rare these days, a popular artist," Hawke said of Weir. "He makes mainstream movies that are artistic.

"To have the budget to do The Truman Show or Master and Commander, you need a Jim Carrey or Russell Crowe. I think Harrison Ford and Gérard Depardieu were his sort of actors. They were director-friendly and didn't see themselves as important."

Weir started his career making films, documentaries and TV shows in his native Australia. In the mid-1980s, he moved to the U.S. and made back-to-back movies with Harrison Ford—Witness and The Mosquito Coast—then followed them with a slew of Oscar-winning hits.

Weir has been nominated for six Oscars himself and is set to receive an honorary Academy Award at the 2022 Governors Awards, which will be held in Los Angeles on November 19.

Hawke has had a number of hit projects in 2022 already, with the likes of The Northman, The Black Phone and Marvel's Moon Knight all well-received.

All six episodes of Hawke's documentary series The Last Movie Stars will be available to watch on HBO Max from July 21. The project focuses on the relationship between Newman and Woodward, using transcripts of recordings Newman made for an abandoned autobiography project. The series uses interview and archive footage, with Clooney and Linney voicing the couple's words from the transcripts.