Ethan Hawke and Woody Harrelson Swap Robert Redford Stories at Sundance: I Wet Myself

Sundance Institute hosted a celebration to honor founder Robert Redford on Friday night at Grand Hyatt Deer Valley in Park City, Utah, where a couple of high-profile presenters nearly stole the show by sharing memories of the late icon.

Sundance veteran and newly-minted Oscar nominee Ethan Hawke had the honor of kicking off the night’s program and revealing the theme, Once Upon a Time. In honor of that, Hawke showed off his talent for storytelling by recalling the first time he met Redford during an audition for A River Runs Through It, the 1992 film directed by Redford and starring Brad Pitt, Craig Sheffer and Tom Skerritt.

“The audition was this huge monologue and I loved Robert Redford so much, and I really wanted to impress him. I really wanted to get this part. I worked on the speech, I worked on a speech. I had this apartment in New York City, and I would run it, run it, run it, and I’d go to bed and wake up 15 minutes later and run it again. Try to go back to sleep. Did I forget the lines? Got to run it again. I didn’t sleep all night. My audition was at 10:15 a.m. I walked in the room and the door opens and there’s Robert. He, literally goes, ‘Hey Ethan, you’re from Austin, Texas, right?’ And I wet myself.”

The ballroom crowd — filled with Ryan Coogler, Chloé Zhao, Chris Pine, Rob Lowe, Nia DaCosta, Tessa Thompson and more — erupted with laughter as Hawke rolled on with his audition tale. Apparently, the actor was so overcome by the moment that he asked to take some time to collect himself. He ducked out of the audition room only to find that Redford’s secretary wanted to rebook him for the following day.

“I come in the next day, the door opens. ‘You ready to work?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’ I do my audition. And he looks at me and he goes, ‘Lemme tell you what I do. I give everyone respect to give them notes and see how they respond to changes. And I would give you that opportunity except you just did a brilliant job and you’re too young for this part. I’m not going to cast you, but I want you to know that you’re going to have a wonderful career.’”

While disappointed, Hawke said he realized that Redford believed in him. He also supported him in a surprising way. “A couple months later, came to see me in a play, a 99-seat house, $10 ticket. Robert Redford showed up. The fuck?” He also later cast him in his movie Quiz Show, offered a Sundance spot for his Richard Linklater film Before Sunrise.

“He championed other people. And as you get older you realize, oh wait, he had his own family. He had his own work. The fact that he took time to care about all of us here is so meaningful,” Hawke said.

The last Redford story he told was about the final time he saw him, more than five years ago, a period when Hawke found himself wearing a cowboy hat everywhere. “I don’t know, I’m aging,” he quipped.

“I felt two hands in the back of my shoulder,” he said of Redford’s touch. Redford then suggested he stop wearing cowboy hats because “people think you’re losing your hair.”

Woody Harrelson took the stage shortly after to share his memories of Redford while wearing not a cowboy hat but a baseball hat with a leaf embroidered on it. He said that Redford’s daughter, Amy, asked him to come say a few words for the program about his onetime co-star in 1993’s Indecent Proposal. The plot of the Adrian Lyne-directed film centers on a billionaire, played by Redford, who offers $1,000,000 to a young married couple, played by Harrelson and Demi Moore, for one night with the wife.

“I admit, he’s the only man on Earth I would sell my wife to,” Harrelson said. “I also admit, unabashedly, that he is the only man I would return the money to to take me for a night.”

The crowd loved that joke, too. Harrelson then shared how infatuated his mother was with Redford and how she felt when she came to the set to visit.

“Even before I dreamed of being an actor, he was part of my childhood, so imagine my unbridled euphoria when I got the chance to work with him. Naturally, my first call was to my mother. She’s terrified of flying — refuses to fly —but she got herself on the plane. … I witnessed my mom become a 16-year-old schoolgirl who did everything but squeal as she approached him on the set. And he was so sweet. He took the time to really talk with her. I’ll always be grateful for his generosity and his kindness. I never saw my mother so happy in her life, bubbling over with joy and lust.”

Getting serious, Harrelson said he asked his co-star for some political help.

“At the time we worked together, Congress was attempting to pass a bill that would open up six million acres of Montana wilderness to various extractive industries like mining and timber, et cetera,” Hrrelson said. “I was trying to stop this bill, and several times I asked Robert to call a senator who had been unreachable and intractable. And you can believe that the senator took that call from Robert and changed his tune. Robert’s contribution to protecting the environment was part of what made him a truly great American. His genius as an actor was matched by his genius as a director, and he didn’t just create many iconic films. He made space for others to do the same.”