Ethan Hawke Tried Boxing After Seeing Rocky — Reality Hit Back
Ethan Hawke walked out of a Rocky screening convinced he could be a contender—then one sparring session beat the boxing dream right out of him.
Movies mess with our heads in the best possible way. Case in point: Ethan Hawke once watched 'Rocky' and decided, sure, I could be a boxer. He told Sydney Sweeney the whole story during their chat on Variety's Actors on Actors, and it turned into a surprisingly sweet detour about her new movie and a dad-daughter night out.
The 'Rocky' phase that lasted one fight
Hawke says he left 'Rocky' fired up, found a gym, and started taking lessons. He trained for roughly six months, got himself into one actual bout... and immediately realized this was not his sport. He thought he was decent defensively until his opponent started hammering his gloves so hard that Hawke was basically punching himself.
"I got my ass kicked."
That was enough. He did not enjoy the losing part and walked away. When Sweeney asked how long he trained before that lone fight, he told her about half a year, then joked that she handled the whole boxing thing better than he did.
Sweeney's 'Christy' and an unexpected A+ movie night
Sweeney recently played real-life champ Christy Martin in 'Christy,' a sports biopic that unfortunately flopped at the box office. Hawke still showed up for it, thanks to a text from his 17-year-old daughter — who, by his own admission, usually has zero interest in hanging out with him. She pinged him out of the blue with a 'What are you doing tonight?' (He took that as code for 'my plans fell through.') When she said she wanted to see 'that new Sydney Sweeney movie,' he jumped on it.
He grabbed tickets at the Alamo Drafthouse, they ordered Impossible Burgers, and it turned into one of their best nights in a while. The conversation afterward stuck with him: his daughter pointed out that the film shows how someone who is literally the best fighter in the United States can still struggle to escape a toxic relationship — and that a lot of women face that reality. She even asked him to pass along to Sweeney that she was glad the film told that story.
So no, Hawke did not become the next heavyweight. But a movie still landed a punch — just in the way the good ones do.