THE ETHAN HAWKE STORY CAUGHT UP IN A SERIAL-MURDER CASE IN 'TAKING LIVES' ... AND HIS OWN PERSONAL TURMOIL.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

There is no break, these days, in Ethan Hawke's dilemmas. The actor can't even promote his latest movie, the tricky serial killer thriller ``Taking Lives,'' properly.

``It's really a problem, talking about this movie,'' Hawke, 33, says with a sigh, calling from his home base in New York. ``I'm really, in a certain way, handcuffed. The more elaborate answers I give, the less fun it is to watch the movie.''

That's because the suspense mystery, which co-stars Angelina Jolie, contains twists that just should not be given away. Not that unusual a situation, but an uncomfortable one for Hawke at this point in time. With little to say about the movie, conversation inevitably drifts toward the topic that the media has been yakking about since ``Taking Lives'' wrapped in Montreal last summer: Hawke's reported affair with a Canadian model and the subsequent collapse of his marriage to actress Uma Thurman.

Unlike many celebrities when they're embroiled in a breakup, though, Hawke doesn't shy away from talking about it. It's the only way to deal with certain dilemmas, he figures.

``I'm trying, as much as I can, to handle this the way I handle everything,'' Hawke says. ``To try to put a human face on it. There's no handbook for the right way to handle this kind of public attention. All I know is that I desperately want to give Uma the respect that she deserves and make sure that nobody ever quotes me as expressing anything other than love toward her. It's a hard thing to do while a marriage is breaking apart and everybody's picking at it.

``Obviously, it's not one of the more joyous times in our lives. But if we can handle it right ... We wouldn't be doing it if we didn't think our lives could be better.''

There has been much speculation as to whether the marriage was on the rocks before anything happened last summer. Hawke, who has a kindergarten-age daughter and toddler son with Thurman, recently told the ABC newsmagazine ``20/20'' that he thought career ambition was the underlying cause of the acting couple's split.

He was more reflective when we spoke.

``Any problem is manageable,'' Hawke says. ``It's all so much deeper than that. There's no one-sentence answer to why people have trouble with their relationships. You talk about your childhood. ... Any of these blanket statements are all gonna be wrong because it's too rich and too deep for that.''

For her part, Thurman told U in January, ``I think the best way to handle it is to wish everybody well. It's like, I take it on, I've gotten so much out of my career, out of my life, it's given me so much - and who said there's going to be no cost? What's free?''

Hawke, too, has found some kind of balance, at least on the professional end of things. Besides making ``Taking Lives'' last year, he rejoined director Richard Linklater and co-star Julie Delpy for ``Before Sunset,'' a ruefully mature sequel to the 1995 ``Before Sunrise,'' one of the key films that made the young Hawke the thinking Gen X girl's heartthrob (``Dead Poets Society'' and ``Reality Bites'' were two others). In addition to that, there was live Shakespeare in New York.

``In a way, I had one of the best acting years of my life,'' Hawke says. ``Doing a mainstream genre picture, then getting to make another small indie movie with Richard Linklater, and I've just finished doing 'Henry IV' on Broadway. So, as an actor, I've done three disparate endeavors, and I've liked them all.''

Not that it makes up for the personal turmoil, of course.

``No, work doesn't balance out things like that,'' he acknowledges. ``Like everybody else, you're just trying to live your life and put one foot in front of the other. Of course, work is something you can control a little bit more than your personal life, your personal feelings and the feelings of other people. That stuff is the real meat of your life and the real work of your life. I'm just trying desperately to handle all that with as much grace as possible.''

Time to put that gracefulness to the test: Tell us what you can about ``Taking Lives'' without giving anything away.

``I've never been in this kind of genre picture before,'' Hawke says. ``I've made a bunch of movies, and I just felt that it would be fun to try to do something I've never done before. And it was fun, actually. The movie has such a dark underbelly, I can't say that I wasn't glad when it wrapped. But I enjoyed all the people I was with.''

In the film, Hawke plays James Costa, an art dealer from western Canada who gets embroiled in the search for a Montreal serial killer. He soon becomes the murderer's prime target.

It was his Oscar-nominated work in his last big-studio picture, ``Training Day,'' that led to this job. Well, that and the intellectual hunk image.

``Ethan showed such a vulnerability in 'Training Day,' and I thought it would be great to have that kind of vulnerability in James Costa,'' says ``Taking Lives'' director D.J. Caruso. ``And I think Ethan's a really cool, good-looking guy, a sexy and dynamic bohemian poet who everyone is always jealous of because he has Uma ... or had Uma Thurman.''

Let's just say that, despite a love scene with Jolie's FBI profiler Illeana Scott, bad things happen to Costa. Anything you dare to add, Ethan?

``The movie certainly deals with some kind of sexuality-with-violence that I've never dealt with in movies,'' he carefully says. ``It's something that I find pretty uncomfortable and that I don't particularly enjoy. But it was precisely because of that that I wanted to do it. If you want to have a long career in the movies, you've got to try to work in different genres. You've got to mix up doing independent films with doing mainstream movies. If you just do independent films, after too long they don't even let you make those. And if you just do mainstream movies, you become some kind of corporate logo. Neither one of those situations is one that I would like. 'Taking Lives' gave me a chance to have a challenging part inside a mainstream movie, which is not something that comes my way that often.''

The Texas-born, New Jersey-raised actor got his movie start at age 14 in the big-budget sci-fi comedy ``Explorers.'' But from the mid-1990s on, he's primarily been associated with arty independent projects such as the New York-set ``Hamlet,'' or more literary studio efforts along the lines of ``Great Expectations'' and ``Snow Falling on Cedars.''

Hawke is also widely quoted in Peter Biskind's recent book about the history of indie films, ``Down and Dirty Pictures.'' And he's one of the few people mentioned in the book who doesn't come off as a maniac.

``I flipped through it,'' Hawke says of the industry's winter must-read. ``But if I were writing a book about independent film in the '90s, I wouldn't focus it so much on Miramax. I think that they are a major player, but by focusing it so much on them and gossip, I think it becomes a less-interesting book. But it certainly makes for entertaining reading.''

As for the book's generally despairing take on the fate of truly independent filmmaking, Hawke sees no need to worry.

``The independent film business is always going to be as good as how serious people are about having stories they want to tell - and how dedicated they're going to be to telling them.'' he reckons. ``Any serious art, over time, isn't made by people giving you permission to do it. People have to dig deep and figure out what they want to talk about. Hopefully, if the right kind of people can rise to the top, they're going to make some movies that are going to touch people. So I don't really worry about the independent film business.''

In fact, Hawke is involved in a new approach to financing small films. Along with his ``A Midnight Clear'' director Keith Gordon, he's trying to raise the production budget for a film called ``Billy Dead'' through an initial public offering, a common practice in most American businesses that's unheard of in the movie world.

Hawke plans to continue his other creative activities as well. The actor has written two published novels and directed a feature film, the little-seen ``Chelsea Walls,'' in 2001.

``They're all part of the same thing for me,'' Hawke says. ``Acting on stage, acting in movies, writing, directing; it's all really the same job, it's all telling stories. I'll be really surprised if, in the next few years, I didn't direct another movie or write another book, if I didn't act on stage again and appear in a few movies. I'd be surprised; this is how I'm hoping to spend the rest of my life.

``But, you know, life is surprising,'' he says, and is at least able to add a laugh to it. ``So, we shall see.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) HAWK'S-EYE VIEW

After Uma, `Taking Live' star learning to cope

(2) no caption (Ethan Hawk)

(3) Angelina Jolie, Olivier Martinez, Ethan Hawke and director D.J. Caruso on the set of ``Taking Lives,'' a thriller that's hard for them to talk about, lest they give away key plot points.

(4) Ethan Hawke, with Julie Delpy in ``Before Sunset,'' talking about continuing to work despite turmoil in his personal life