I was the opposite, didn't realize he was in it until he showed up. (My mom, who has moved to Canada, recommended this.) He is awesome, but so is she. This movie is mostly a two-hander, and both leads are at the top of the acting craft.
"It was far from a perfect love story, but somehow it was still very sweet."
You are touching upon a very odd and interesting effect of the movie that I assume comes from the complications of the real life story. Here's a woman with a fascinating life story, who had a long relationship with this man, and he treated her poorly for a long time at the beginning, but she really loved him and stuck by him until the end even after she became famous. By modern standards, one could argue that Everett should be played as a villain. But that doesn't speak to the complexity of the real story, and it also would inherently shift the focus away from being a story first and foremost about the title character and her eccentric and ultimately wildly successful life.
This might be one strength of biography, that it allows at least the opportunity to write a screenplay that might be justifiably objectionable if it were just invented fiction. And then for a thoughtful actor like Ethan Hawke to have the opportunity to play someone outside the usual parameters of how cinematic characters are presented to the audience.
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