Sex Columnist Details Chance (But Chaste!) Encounter With Ethan Hawke in New Tell-All

With Moon Knight, The Northman and The Black Phone, Ethan Hawke is having (yet) another moment, but writer Alyssa Shelasky still isn’t over the one she shared with him on the streets of New York City back in 2004.

In her new tell-all, This Might Be Too Personal, Shelasky, who pens New York magazine’s Sex Diaries column, recounts randomly bumping into Hawke on a Chelsea sidewalk as she was fleeing a friend’s wedding, having made the decision to ditch her fiance and her own impending nuptials.

In a mini excerpt shared with THR, Shelasky writes that she was “weeping, barefoot, bleeding” when Hawke stopped to ask if she was OK: “And there we were: me, the deranged lunatic, and him, my Dream Guy, as sexy and grungy as I imagined he’d be, staring at each other under the most flickering, soul-warming New York City sun. Finally the spinning world stood still. My mind stood still. My naked feet were planted firmly into the earth. Ethan’s earth. And then, he smiled. A real, honest-to-goodness human smile that seemed to come from the depths of his being.”

Shelasky’s book also offers (nice) uncensored takes on other stars: Hugh Jackman (“nicest of all”), Heath Ledger (“too sweet for this earth”), Gwyneth Paltrow (“genuinely cool”) and others. This Might Be Too Personal is out May 17 from Macmillan.

This story first appeared in the May 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.