John Hawkes

Hawkes got his start the way a lot of serious actors do — through the theater. Co-founding Big State Productions and performing at the Kennedy Center gave him a grounding in craft before Hollywood came calling (TMDB). His early screen credits read like a tour through the mid-to-late '90s genre landscape: Robert Rodriguez's vampire-western hybrid From Dusk Till Dawn in 1996, the thriller A Slipping-Down Life in 1999, and the big-budget disaster film The Perfect Storm in 2000, where he appeared alongside a cast that included George Clooney (TMDB). The 2003-2005 stretch was a turning point. He starred in and co-produced Buttleman (2003), an independent film that earned him a Breakout Performance Award at the 2004 Sedona Film Festival and a Special Jury Prize at the 2003 Deep Ellum Film Festival — recognition that came from the indie circuit, not the studio machine (TMDB). Then came Deadwood on HBO, where his portrayal of Sol Star, a determined and principled merchant trying to build something legitimate in a town that didn't reward legitimacy, became one of the show's quiet anchors (TMDB). And Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) — a film that won at both Sundance and Cannes — put his name in front of a genuinely international audience (TMDB). He kept working steadily through the following decade, appearing in Miami Vice (2006) and later Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), Martin McDonagh's dark, award-winning ensemble piece that swept through the festival circuit (TMDB). Hard to say if any single role defines him — that might actually be the point. Hawkes has never seemed interested in being defined. He's a musician as well as an actor, and that restlessness shows in the range of projects he's attached himself to over nearly three decades in the industry.