Ethan Hawke Reveals How Robert Redford Nurtured His Career

A week after Robert Redford‘s death at age 89, Ethan Hawke is recounting how the actor-director remained in his life after turning him down for a role in A River Runs Through It.

On Wednesday, Sept. 24’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Hawke, 54, opened up about how Redford declined to cast him in the 1992 drama, which eventually starred Craig Sheffer and Brad Pitt — but still considers the star “one of the heroes of my life.”

“So this is the life of a young actor, it’s tough, it’s amazing. You get an audition for Robert Redford, right?” Hawke recounted to host Kimmel. “And I get this little speech I’m supposed to memorize and it’s really long — it’s like, a page and a half long — and I stay up all night working on this speech. I’m working on it, I’m working on it, I come into the audition, I’m half an hour early, sitting in a chair like this. They let me in, ‘Mr. Redford will see you now.'”

According to the Black Phone actor, his role in 1989’sThe Dead Poets Society had helped him snag an audition in front of Redford.

“I walked in the room, he shook my hand, he said, ‘Hey Ethan, I hear you’re from Austin,'” Hawke recalled, sharing how the walls were plastered with posters of Redford’s most well-known movies, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Downhill Racer, The Candidate and more.

“He knew my name and he knew where I was from. My brain started to break,” Hawke continued. “He goes, ‘So, you ready to read?’ I was like, ‘To be totally honest, sir, I think I’m starstruck. I’m not sure I can breathe right now, and if I could just have like, 60 seconds to step out of the room and come back in again, I’ll be ready.'”

Redford then insisted that Hawke come back the following day to deliver his speech, but Hawke joked that he didn’t want to return the next day, recalling that he was up all night memorizing the lines and said it was “absolute torture” to wait another day.

“I do the audition and he’s really cool. He looks at me and he goes, ‘You know, I’m an actor.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I know,'” Hawke joked, to laughs from Kimmel.

“He said, ‘I always give actors a second chance. I give them some notes and I let them try it one more time to see what they’re made of, but you nailed it. And you’re gonna have a great career and you’re too young for this part, but it was a pleasure to meet you,'” Hawke shared of Redford.

“… It hurt not to get the part and to know it immediately and to say it to my face, but it was the truth. And he also said something nice, right?” Hawke recalled. “He said I’m going to have a real career — I didn’t get the part. I couldn’t be sure whether I felt good or bad.”

Just a few months later, Hawke shared, Redford showed his support for the young star once again —by showing up to his off-Broadway play.

“Afterwards, he came backstage and said, ‘Good job, I tell you, keep doing what you’re doing, it’s gonna go great,'” he said.

According to Hawke, the pair struck up a friendship after the interactions, and the star even shared what Redford’s last words were to him before his death on Sept. 16.

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“He said, ‘Stop wearing a cowboy hat, people’ll think you’re losing your hair,” Hawke recalled. “It was about 18 months ago or something like that. So I just wanted to bring him up, because he’s a legend.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Hawke shared that Redford was a big supporter of smaller and up-and-coming artists — and it came him respect “the kind of human being he was.”

“When Before Sunrise came out and nobody liked it, you know who liked it?” the actor told Kimmel. “Robert Redford liked it. And he used it to open the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. He was a champion of other people and he understood how to use his power to empower others.”

According to theThe New York Times, the first outlet to report the actor’s death, Redford died at his home outside Provo. No cause of death was given, but Berger told the outlet in a statement that he died in his sleep.

In addition to his Westerns and directorial efforts, some of the star’s most memorable films include The Way We Were (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), All the President’s Men (1976), The Natural (1984), Indecent Proposal (1993), The Horse Whisperer (1998) and All Is Lost (2013).

PEOPLE is celebrating the life and career of Robert Redford in a new tribute edition.