Ethan Hawke's Unusual Approach To 'Hold His Own' Against Denzel Washington In Training Day

When Ethan Hawke was cast alongside Denzel Washington in "Training Day," he took a unique approach to his preparation. Rather than focusing solely on his own performance, he studied how the best of Denzel's previous co-stars acted alongside the screen legend, taking the best parts to craft his portrayal of rookie cop Jake Hoyt. For anyone who's seen the film, such an approach arguably made Hawke the unsung hero of the movie, which was otherwise entirely stolen by his co-star's unmatched charisma.

With a career as illustrious and varied as Washington's, everybody is going to have their own personal favorite performance. For those who came of age in the late-90s/early 2000s that performance will almost certainly be LAPD detective Alonzo Harris in Antoine Fuqua's unsurpassed crime thriller "Training Day." It's hard to convey how good Washington is in what remains one of his best movies. His portrayal of the charismatic but deeply corrupt cop is just something you sort of have to experience, making his Oscar win for the role entirely deserved.

It seems Hawke was aware of just how magnetic his co-star was going to be ahead of time. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2025, the actor revealed that he'd watched Denzel's films with a particular goal in mind. "It was less about 'how can I hold my own against him?,'" he explained, "and more like, 'who excelled at being a really good scene partner for him?'" After the first read through of the script, Hawke was certain he'd found the right approach. "On the way home, I thought, 'Right, so if I just do an OK job at this, then this guy wins the Oscar,'" he explained. "You know what I mean? It really was, 'I just need to not fumble the ball here, and we're good.'"

Despite the fact he'd been acting for 25 years when he took the lead in Antoine Fuqua's movie, Denzel Washington had yet to play a bonafide bad guy. "Training Day" changed that, sparking a considerable amount of controversy in the process. Anyone unaware that this was Denzel's first time as an antagonist, however, would never have guessed as much. In his portrayal of Alonzo Harris, the actor effortlessly combined his trademark charisma with a palpable menace, as if he'd done this villain thing a hundred times before.

For Ethan Hawke, who recently portrayed the Grabber in "Black Phone 2," the name of the game was essentially to give his co-star the space he needed. But that didn't necessarily mean simply getting out of the way. "I kept thinking of Gene Hackman," said Hawke during his Rolling Stone interview. "You watch a lot of Denzel's movies, and you see people getting out of his way. Then you watch 'Crimson Tide,' and those guys are just going toe to toe. Neither of them are getting out of each other's way.'" That 1995 submarine thriller saw Washington's executive officer Ronald Hunter face off against Hackman's commanding officer Captain Franklin Ramsey as they argued over how to interpret orders to fire their submarine's nuclear missiles. For Hawke, this clash of the titans contained everything he needed to construct his "Training Day" performance.

"My goal was to be a Gene Hackman-level scene partner for him," continued Hawke, "which means honoring the character and giving the other person something to play off of. I kept thinking, 'This guy can handle anything I can throw at him. So let me just try to make my character, Jake, as interesting and real and f****** three-dimensional as possible.'"

Denzel Washington wasn't messing around when he came to "Training Day." Having read the script, he'd written a single ominous phrase on the pages — "The wages of sin are death." As such, Ethan Hawke wasn't just faced with holding his own opposite a legend, he was faced with acting alongside a man seemingly possessed by the will to deliver a career defining performance in "Training Day" (no doubt propelled by the fact he wanted to prove wrong critics who said he shouldn't play a villain).

A lesser co-star might well have crumbled under the weight of that pressure, but the always thoughtful Hawke knew exactly what to do — even if he was somewhat overshadowed by Denzel. "Someone once said that my performance got a little lost with what Denzel is doing," said Hawke. "My response to that is that it got lost the way that Scottie Pippen's performance got lost — I'm really proud of what we did there, because it's like I'm on the court playing with Michael Jordan in that movie."

Having his performance become "lost" was sort of Hawke's job. "Training Day" was about Denzel from the off, and had Hawke decided to try to match his co-star's energy the formula wouldn't have worked. Thankfully, he did exactly what was necessary, essentially using the real-world dynamic between he and Denzel to heighten the "decorated detective trains rookie cop" dynamic between Alonzo Harris and Jake Hoyt. According to Hawke, doing so led to one of his most memorable filmmaking experiences. "There's a handful of experiences I've had where I can remember every day, every minute of being on set," he said. "This was one of them. It's like I was playing on a team with nothing but Hall-of-Famers on it."