Ethan Hawke reveals the meanest thing a critic ever said about him, and OUCH!

It’s no secret that actors — aka people who essentially are forced to live their lives in the public eye thanks to a little thing called the Internet — kind of have to develop a thick skin. But that doesn’t mean that what a critic says doesn’t legitimately hurt sometimes.

And recently, actor Ethan Hawke got super, painfully real on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert about basically the worst thing anyone has ever said about his acting. And it was VERY OUCH.

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ICYMI, he tells the audience that after his first Broadway performance as a young, eager actor, the New York Times wrote, “Ethan Hawke plays [the character of] Constantine more concerned with his pimples than his poetry. Perhaps he should spend less time at the Actors Studio, and more at the dermotologist.”

AHHHHH! WAY HARSH!

Hawke — now 45 — tells the story with a huge grin on his face and clearly has a major dose of perspective about the whole thing. But still, wow. We feel for you, dude.

And, with hits like Reality Bites, Before Sunrise, and the upcoming The Magnificent Seven (oh, not to mention the fact that he just received a prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. NBD) the joke’s really on that NYT critic, don’t ya think?

Okay, we’re off to grab some aloe for that second-hand BURN.

H/T Vulture