In his new film First Reformed Ethan Hawke plays Ernst Toller, an ailing priest whose own demons are brought simmering to the surface after a troubling encounter with a young parishioner.

It’s an austere, unpredictable and sometimes shocking work written and directed by Paul Schrader that deliberately echoes his other great loner study from 1976, Taxi Driver. And like that film, it has a career-best performance at its core.

Esquire spoke with 47-year-old Hawke about First Reformed, how Hollywood is changing post #MeToo and what life and fatherhood has taught him so far.

You realise your life really is your message

I was having coffee with Paul Schrader, and he asked me if I understood what a ‘recessive performance’ meant. That’s what I was going for with Toller. When you try to avoid entertaining people, it makes the audience hunt for the character.

When I read the script I thought: OK, this is the guy who wrote Taxi Driver. You feel it. But I kind of decided I would ignore that. It’s like when you’re doing a Sam Shepard play, you don’t need to speak to the other productions – that happens in the audience’s mind all by itself.

I like meditating on people I admire. I wrote about Kris Kristofferson recently. Here’s a guy marching for the civil rights movement at the right time, writing music, acting in things, breaking all kind of rules and standing up for what he believes in.

I think that’s what men need now: more positive roles models. There are a lot of white males who were on the right side of history. Look at the transcendentalists. Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau… they were advocates for women’s rights and gay rights and the unwavering equality of mankind. And they were naturalists.

It’s like the whole issue in the States on whether to take down the statues of Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis: well, why not put up a statue of Harriet Tubman, or Frederick Douglass? We don’t have to erase history, let’s just decide the part of history we’re most interested in. Let’s pick better icons.

The best age to be? As old as possible!

Men need better icons

Hollywood is definitely changing. You hear it on conference calls and development meetings, someone who, ten years ago, would never have said: ‘well, what about a female director?’ They’re pretty proud of themselves for saying that now. And you know what? That’s alright. It’s like when I was a kid, people would drive down the road and throw their garbage right out of the window. Wouldn’t even think twice about it. Now there’s a certain amount of shame to doing that. And that’s society’s job: to start shaming people for doing the wrong thing and celebrating people who are leading.

The best piece of advice I was ever given is to remember that your spirit is gentle, and you have to be quiet to hear it. Being in touch with that voice is the work of our lives, I think. Good things happen when you can hear that voice, when you find out whoever you are. My Mother taught me that.

My fantasy life would be to be a dairy farmer. Something very straightforward and outdoorsy.

I have four kids. What they teach you is be more compassionate for other people. That, and how little you truly know.

Whenever you try to advise young people, you’re announcing yourself as an asshole. If they are really interested, they’ll ask. My daughter said to me once: you don’t have to tell me that, I’ve lived with you the last 19 years, you don't think I know that’s what you think?! You start to realise that your life really is your message. You can talk about how bad smoking is, but if you smoke it’s utterly meaningless. You can talk about how bad it is to lie, but if you lie it’s utterly meaningless. They see it all.

First Reformed is out now.