Ethan Hawke shares regret over daughter Maya’s ‘really hard and complicated childhood’
Topics: Hollywood, Maya Hawke, Parenting, Stranger Things, Celebrity
Phoebe Tonks
Featured Image Credit: Michael Campanella/Getty Images
Topics: Hollywood, Maya Hawke, Parenting, Stranger Things, Celebrity
Ethan Hawke has candidly admitted one of his biggest regrets as he revealed how his daughter Maya’s childhood was far from easy.
Maya, who is best known for her role as Robin Buckley in Stranger Things, is Hawke’s eldest child with ex-wife and renowned actress Uma Thurman.
Like any doting dad, Hawke brimmed with pride as he confessed he has known his daughter would become an ‘artist’ from an early age during his Variety & CNN’s Actors on Actors conversation with Sydney Sweeney.
“I knew that she was gonna be a very good one,” he reflected. “That was her safe place, watercoloring, dancing, singing all throughout her childhood.”
Advert
She found a kind of freedom in expression in it, something which Hawke admitted extended far beyond her young years.
“Anything that had to do with human communication was something she vibrated to,” he said. “I remember some teacher said, ‘Maya, are you happy?’ Cause they were worried about her. And she said something to the effect of, ‘Do you really think that’s the question?’
‘I thought, ‘I love this kid,’” he continued. “She was about 13. [Maya said] ‘I don’t think that’s a very interesting question. I think there’s a lot more interesting questions than whether I’m happy or not. Am I happy? No. But I don’t aspire to be happy.’”
Despite this however, Hawke revealed to Sweeney that: “There were a lot of things about her childhood, that were really, really hard and complicated and things I regret for her."
While Hawke didn’t reveal exactly which hardships his daughter had faced, we do know from the actress’ own admission that she has battled with dyslexia for much of her life.
Much like her famous parents, Maya opted to pursue a career in acting and even dropped out of the prestigious Juilliard school in New York to pursue her very first role in the BBC mini-series production of Little Women back in 2017.
From there, multiple roles have followed including in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Stranger Things, and Inside Out 2.
Having grown up in the shadow of two Hollywood heavyweights, Maya has been exposed to the film and TV industry for most of her life – yet even despite her impressive lineage, the actress was keen to ensure she only took on roles she felt she had earned.
She previously told Vogue: “It’s very ordinary to pursue a career that your parents do, but when it’s in the public eye it becomes a complicated thing. I am not in denial about the fact that if it weren’t for them I wouldn’t be here today. I’ve thought a lot about how to deal with that, and one way was to not take any opportunity unless I was absolutely positive that I’d earned every scrap of it.”