Ethan Hawke vented about Hamlet's director Michael Almereyda during a scene - unaware that every word was picked up by a hot mic and could be heard by the filmmaker.

The 55-year-old actor recalled the mishap while making the 2000 drama film, as he moderated a conversation for his 67-year-old pal and co-star Kyle MacLachlan's new memoir, Fictional Selves.

Per People, Ethan said: "We were doing a scene in a car where we had to wait for a long period of time, and I don't know what I was mad about - I went on to work with this director many times and he's a friend - but I was very mad at Michael [Almereyda] that day and I was just spitting venom about this guy, 'He doesn't know what he's f****** doing.'

"I looked, and I went, 'What's he doing?' I look out the window, and the director has his headphones on."

Kyle said that he and Ethan were "mic'd up" while the latter was ranting, so Michael, now 67, heard what was being said about him.

According to the pair, the director "took it in stride", and the three of them all get along - even working together on the 2020 biographical drama Tesla.

The hot mic mishap did not overshadow Ethan's experience of making Hamlet, which also starred Julia Stiles, now 45, as Ophelia and Bill Murray, now 76, as Polonius.

He told Kyle: "[It was] a group of people coming together for absolute bliss of loving work.

"We had Bill Murray on set who's reading books on the background about how to perform Shakespeare. We were all so sincere and in love with it."

"Because I was already a fan of yours, but there was a looseness and a freedom that the real you possesses that I hadn't seen in the earlier work because he was so comfortable with the verse, and not only comfortable with it, you enjoyed it."

Hamlet is a modern-day take on Shakespeare's tragedy that follows the titular young filmmaker (Ethan) as he struggles with grief and revenge following the death of his dad (Sam Shepard), all while he navigates his relationship with Ophelia.