Do you remember this shy teenager, from 25 years ago, at a boys'
boarding school in the movie "Dead Poets Society"?
After a distinguished film and stage career as actor-writer-director
(e.g., "Boyhood", "Before Midnight", "Training Day"),
including four Academy Award nominations, his net worth now is estimated to be
$45-million, as reported on the Celebrity Net Worth website, and he
was ranked in 2015 as "the world's highest paid actor", pulling in
$75-million between September 2014 and September 2015, and
nearly $40-million more than his nearest actor rival, MediaMass.net
is reporting today.
If you didn't already guess, his name is Ethan Hawke, and this
week I got to meet his mother Leslie Hawke during my trip to
Washington DC.
Leslie Hawke heads a charity, which she co-founded 15 years ago,
called the Ovidiu Rom Foundation, based in Bucharest, Romania, and it's
devoted to promoting early education for disadvantaged children in that country.
Her son Ethan, famous worldwide, contributes his celebrity status to
attract donors to fundraising events for his mom's foundation, as in
this 2013 VIP premier-showing of "Before Midnight" at the National
Children's Palace in Bucharest:
More recently Ethan joined his mother at a Gala Fundraiser held in
one of the ornate halls inside the famous 1100-room Parliament
Palace, built by the former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Dinner tickets for that evening were priced at 300 Euros (roughly
equivalent to USD $340).
Ethan Hawke also assisted his mother with a brief voice-over in this
television spot about the charitable work of Ovidiu Rom. As Leslie Hawke
says, when accused of "exploiting" her son's celebrity to benefit her
charity: "Of course... you do the good you have the power to do."
Leslie Hawke interviewed on Romanian television (2-1/3 minutes)
When I met Leslie Hawke this week in Washington DC, she had just flown in
from Bucharest for a lunchtime "brainstorming-session" on entrepreneurship,
arranged by the Romanian-American Alianta organizaton where I had agreed to
be a co-chair. Though a bit weary from her 15-hour flight, she was elated
to report that Romania's government had just voted support for her
Ovidiu Rom charity, starting in 2016.
As we were chatting, Leslie asked me which State I am from, as she had detected that
we both have Southern accents, she being from Texas, me from Alabama. "Oh, do
you happen to know an Alabama writer named Charles Gaines?" she inquired.
"Yes, indeed!" I replied in amazement. "Charles and I were 9th-Grade classmates at
Indian Springs School near Birmingham." Then, remembering her connection to the
American movie industry, I recalled that Charles Gaines was the writer for a movie
entitled "Stay Hungry" that got filmed in Birmingham and that starred a
young actor named Arnold Schwarzenegger back during his days a bodybuilding champion.
Well, it turns out that Charles Gaines is a summertime neighbor of Leslie Hawke: they
both own nearby cabins in Nova Scotia, Canada, and I recalled that Charles had once
mentioned in an email that he had a friend who was encouraging him to come visit Romania
and maybe write about disadvantaged children there.
Yet another "celebrity" I met this week in Washington was U.S. Congressman Mike
Rogers from Alabama, who represents the same rural county where I'd lived
during my childhood -- and who will be making his first trip to Romania in
just a few weeks.
Congressman Rogers serves on the Homeland Security Committee,
and in particular on its Subcommittee on Cybersecurity. A week ago
he became head of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces
Subcommittee. Today there are approximately 150 airmen and 8 fighter jets
from the Alabama Air National Guard's 187th Fighter Wing departing
for Romania for a month-long training exercise with Romania's Air Force.
Many Americans seem not to be aware of our country's numerous
involvements with Romania, including Microsoft's press-announcement
yesterday that it intends to hire hundreds of Information Technology
specialists from around the world to work in its Romania offices over
the next five years, and an Oracle Corporation executive who was seated next
to me at Wednesday's Alianta Gala dinner said that his company's plan to expand
its Bucharest operations into several other cities of Romania "already
is well underway."
ALLAN CRUSE
09 OCT 2016