Ethan Hawke to Receive Career Achievement Honor from Palm Springs International Film Awards
The Palm Springs International Film Awards has announced that Ethan Hawke is the recipient of the Career Achievement Award celebrating his impressive body of work including his most recent project Blue Moon.
The Film Awards will take place on January 3, 2026, at the Palm Springs Convention Center, with the festival running January 2-12, 2026. The event will be presented by Kering and sponsored by Entertainment Tonight.
“Ethan Hawke has spent four decades building one of the most adventurous and prolific careers in film, consistently delivering performances defined by depth, intelligence, and fearless originality,” said Festival Chairman Nachhattar Singh Chandi. “In Blue Moon, he brings those same qualities to his show-stopping portrayal of Lorenz Hart, capturing the famed lyricist at a moment when his life is unraveling as his former partner Richard Rodgers debuts Oklahoma!. Hawke’s work here stands among the most powerful performances of his career. It is a privilege to present the Career Achievement Award to Ethan Hawke.”
Teaming up once again with his frequent collaborator, filmmaker Richard Linklater. Blue Moon sees Hawke star as legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart. On the evening of March 31, 1943, Hart confronts his shattered self- confidence in Sardi’s bar as his former collaborator Richard Rodgers celebrates the opening night of his groundbreaking hit Oklahoma! By the time this night is over, Hart will have confronted both a world that no longer values his talent and the seeming impossibility of love. The film from Sony Pictures Classics also stars Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale and Berlin Film Festival Supporting Performance winner Andrew Scott.
Ethan Hawke is an Academy Award nominated actor whose expansive career includes directing feature films, documentaries and highly acclaimed stage productions; in addition to being a producer, screenwriter, and best-selling author. Hawke’s filmography includes nine collaborations with filmmaker Richard Linklater, including Boyhood (Academy Award, SAG, Golden Globe, BAFTA, Choice and Independent Spirit Award nominations), and memorably the Before trilogy (Before Sunrise and its two sequels Before Sunset and Before Midnight), co-starring Julie Delpy. Hawke, Delpy, and Linklater received Academy Award and Independent Spirit Award nominations for writing the latter two films and were honored with the Louis XIII Genius Award for the trilogy at the 2014 Critics Choice Awards. He received Academy Award and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Supporting Actor for Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day, opposite Denzel Washington. He also received career-best notices for Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, for which he won the Independent Spirit Award, the Gotham Award and over 30 critics’ awards (including the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association for Best Actor). More recently, he received career-best acclaim for his portrayal of abolitionist John Brown in The Good Lord Bird, the Showtime series he starred in, executive produced and co-wrote, winning a Peabody Award among numerous other accolades, including an AFI ‘TV Program of the Year’, the Gotham Award for Outstanding Performance in a New Series, and SAG Award, Golden Globe, and TCA Award nominations (and a WGA Award and USC Scripter Award nominations for his writing).
Hawke joins this year’s previously announced honorees Michael B. Jordan (Icon Award), Leonardo DiCaprio (Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actor), Adam Sandler (Chairman’s Award), Hamnet’s director Chloé Zhao and cast members Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal (Vanguard Award); and Sentimental Value cast members Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Elle Fanning (International Star Award). Past recipients of the Career Achievement Award include Kevin Costner, Bruce Dern, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins and Samuel L. Jackson.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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