Age: 66
male
John Hawkes (born John Marvin Perkins; September 11, 1959) is an American actor and musician. He co-founded the Big State Productions Theatre Company and appeared in the group's original play, "In the West", at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He took on the stage name "John Hawkes" because another actor shared his birth name, John Perkins. Hawkes starred in the critically-acclaimed, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which received wide praise and was awarded the special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as the Camera d'Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Additional feature credits include A Slipping-Down Life (1999), Identity (2003), Miami Vice (2006), Playing God (2004), The Perfect Storm (2000), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and Caçadores de Perigo (1997). Hawkes also starred in and co-produced the independent film, Buttleman (2003), for which he received a Breakout Performance Award at the 2004 Sedona Film Festival and a Special Jury Prize at the 2003 Deep Ellum Film Festival. Hawkes' television credits include a lead role in the critically-acclaimed HBO series, Deadwood (2004), in which he played "Sol Star", a spirited entrepreneur in a lawless town.
Set in the quiet Midwestern town of Ravenwood, Illinois, DAD ATE MOM! follows Ethan Harper, a weary but devoted factory worker and father of three, whose seemingly normal suburban life begins to unravel after his young children start saying things no child should know. Their calm, unsettling statements—about death, mirrors, and things hiding beneath beds—are dismissed as imagination at first, until Ethan’s wife Mary mysteriously vanishes without a trace. As neighbors begin to disappear and the police fail to act, Ethan uncovers disturbing clues hidden inside his own home: childlike drawings, ritualistic patterns, and signs suggesting that something is spreading from family to family. What begins as a psychological mystery escalates into a brutal suburban slasher, where children watch silently from the background and violence feels disturbingly domestic. The film builds toward a chilling revelation—this is not one broken household, but a chain—and ends with a haunting question: what if children aren’t imagining anything at all?
