Must be music to his ears: Ethan Hawke is cast as legendary jazz trumpeter Chet Baker in upcoming biopic Born To Be Blue
Ethan Hawke looks to have been born to play the role of Chet Baker in a movie of the trumpeter's life.
Although Baker died at the age of 58 back in 1988 – when the now 43-year-old Hawke was still a teenager – photos reveal an uncanny resemblance.
That might be a major reason why Hawke was chosen to star in the upcoming biopic on Baker’s life, Born To Be Blue, which was revealed by The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday.
Like brothers: Ethan Hawke will play trumpeter Chet Baker in the upcoming biopic, Born To Be Blue, a good choice, considering their similar appearances
Directed by Robert Budreau from his own screenplay, the movie is expected to chronicle the later years of Baker’s life.
Carmen Ejogo and Callum Keith Rennie are set to co-star in the film.
A young singing and trumpet-playing sensation on the jazz scene starting in the 1950s, Baker quickly became addicted to heroin.
Better days: Baker plays his trumpet back when he was a rising star not yet destroyed by drugs
Because of this addiction, which continued until the musician's death, Baker’s promising career turned into a life of pawned instruments, prison sentences, and fights resulting in injuries catastrophic to Baker’s career.
Born To Be Blue will take place in the time following these lows, when Baker had a career resurgence in the 1970s and 1980s.
Although he mainly played in Europe at this time and released music only on obscure foreign labels, the period is considered to be Baker’s most prolific.
His first wife: Hawke with Uma Thurman at the Academy Awards in LA in 2000
Budreau has not yet said which aspects of Baker’s life will be the focus of the film, but the musician’s return to the trumpet and ongoing struggles with addiction are most likely.
Hawke may be experiencing a career resurgence of his own these days, starring in everything from The Purge to Boyhood to Before Midnight (for which he was nominated for an Oscar for his co-written screenplay) in the past few years.
Famously married to Uma Thurman from 1998 to 2005, Hawke has since wedded his former nanny, Ryan Hawke, and has two young children.
As for Baker – and presumably the movie – there is no happy ending, since the musician was found dead in an Amsterdam hotel room in 1988.
While there were drugs (heroin and cocaine) in Baker’s system at the time, external injuries – determined to be accidental – were the actual cause of death.
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