Ethan Hawke reacts to daughter Maya's claim that producers cast actors based on Instagram followers: 'Crazy'

Less than a week after Maya Hawke revealed that she’d heard from directors that a cast’s total Instagram follower count had to hit a certain threshold for producers to fund the project, her dad Ethan Hawke is chiming in with his own similar experience. 

“Sometimes I’ll be setting a movie up and someone will say, ‘Oh, you should cast Suzie.’ I’m like, ‘Who is she?’ ‘She has 10 million followers.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, cool, has she acted before?’ ‘No, but…’ And you’re like, ‘Wow, so this is going to help me get the movie made? This is crazy,’” the Oscar-nominated actor told the press at the Berlin Film Festival, per Variety. “So if I don’t have this public-facing [platform], I don’t have a career? And if I get more followers I might get that part? What?”

The actor, whose latest collaboration with Richard Linklater, Blue Moon, premiered at the festival yesterday, noted that he meets “so many young actors” these days that believe being an actor is just going to the gym and drinking protein shakes.

Related: Ethan Hawke explains why 'offensive art' isn't getting made in Hollywood

“I wish they could meet Phil Hoffman like I did when I was 18, because it’s a much more substantive and enjoyable life,” Ethan said. “I mean, go to the gym if you want to, but that doesn’t make you — Robert De Niro is not great because he has a six-pack. If the part calls for it, he’ll do it, and that’s awesome. But he’s so much more than that.”

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Thankfully, Ethan noted that his daughter has become a vital source in teaching him how to properly use his social media platform to his advantage. 

“She’s like, ‘Dad, you need an Instagram account… That was a terrible post, Dad, get rid of it,'” he said. “But she’s an artist, my daughter. You can’t stop her. She’s always creative: painting, singing, writing music, acting. I don’t worry about her, she’ll figure that out. But I learn a lot from her now.”

On a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Maya revealed that she heard from some directors that an actor’s follower count — or lack thereof — can have a real impact on a project.

Related: Maya Hawke says a director once told her that she was 'prettier with my mouth closed': 'I was really upset'

“I’m talking about how I’m gonna delete my Instagram and [some directors are] like, ‘Just so you know, when I’m casting a movie with some producers, they hand me a sheet with the amount of collective followers I have to get of the cast that I cast,’” she recalled on the podcast. “‘So if you delete your Instagram and I lose those followers, understand these are the kinds of people I need to cast around you.’”

The Stranger Things star called the entire experience “confusing” – and not one that has a straightforward solution, either.

“The industry keeps changing and you have to change with it and understand that all of these things are getting blurred,” she said. “And there are wonderful, incredible actors I admire whose personalities we all know very well, so I think just finding out the footing in these changing times of social media and public personality and also how difficult it is to get things made.”

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