Ethan Hawke felt 'empowered' by Marvel Studios

Ethan Hawke found working with Marvel Studios "empowering".

The 51-year-old actor stars as charismatic antagonist Arthur Harrow in Marvel Cinematic Universe spin-off series 'Moon Knight' and although he has been critical of superhero movies in the past, he's now got a different perspective on the genre because of how open the studio were to hearing his ideas for the show.

He admitted: "Through much of my career, the higher the budget went up, the higher the fear quotient went up, and from the people in charge, there was a lot less creativity on set because there was so much fear.

"But there’s something about the success that Marvel has achieved that empowers them to be confident and not be fearful. I’m only guessing here, but somehow in the DNA between Kevin Feige’s relationship to Robert Downey Jr., there’s something really good that happened between the producorial-actor relationship. They have tremendous faith and belief in the actor’s ability to contribute.

"That opening scene is a great example of them using your creativity to help get you to invest in the show and to come up with original ideas. So I was really impressed by that.

"Oscar [Isaac] poured himself into this part. At one point when Oscar and I were rehearsing, I said to him, 'You realise that they’re being so kind? They believe in us so much that if this doesn’t work, it’s our fault. We can’t blame anybody.'

"But that’s really empowering as a performer. Yes, you have to work in their kitchen, but they’re going to let you work."

Ethan and his co-star Oscar Isaac - who plays the titular character - bonded over their shared love of running and the two actors carried out a lot of their discussions about the script while pounding the streets of Budapest.

He told The Hollywood Reporter: "There was a quarantine going on, so we had very little access to do much of anything. That city is actually incredibly beautiful. And yeah, we both realised that we like to run.

"So it was a great way to talk and get to know each other and make small talk about the show and work out problems with our scripts. That’ll probably be what I remember most about our summer. Just battling out the scripts as we ran around Budapest."