Ethan Hawke Shares Moment He Knew Daughter, Maya, Was Famous
Ethan Hawke has known for nearly a decade now that acting is starting to run in his family. In 1998, he married fellow Hollywood A-lister Uma Thurman (whom he met on the set of “Gattaca” and divorced in 2005), with whom he had two children, Maya and Levon. Both his first daughter and son have started acting careers of their own (the vocations of his two teenage daughters by his second wife, Ryan Shawhughes, remain to be discovered), and the former has become a rising star thanks to her roles in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and especially “Stranger Things.” During a recent interview, Hawke shared the first experience that made him realize his daughter’s new stardom.
As Robin Buckley, Maya Hawke Eclipses Her Father’s Fame
The interview in question was a January 7 segment on the TODAY show with Craig Melvin. The principal topic for discussion was Hawke’s recent lead role as the early-20th-century lyricist Lorenz Hart in last year’s acclaimed dramedy biopic “Blue Moon.” This role (which marks his ninth collaboration with director Richard Linklater) has already become one of the most celebrated performances of his career, earning him several nominations and wins (and the Oscars haven’t even been announced yet). However, the conversation eventually turned to how his daughter is now experiencing at least as much recognition as he is – and probably more.
The linchpin of the “more” argument was a clip that Melvin played from an interview with Maya Hawke, in which she recounted a time that a fan accosted her while she was out with her father. Initially, Ethan Hawke thought that the stranger was his fan and declined to take any photos with him, whereupon the individual replied (as quoted or paraphrased by Maya Hawke): “‘I don’t know who you are, man. I wanted to talk to Robin.'”
With its cast of predominantly young actors, “Stranger Things” is a show with a lot of teen appeal, and the older Hawke also testified in a January 6 interview with Stephen Colbert that his two teenage daughters, Clementine and Indiana, hear their classmates discussing their older half-sister far more often than they hear his name brought up. He recounted how, when “The Lowdown” creator Sterlin Harjo asked his younger daughters whether it was “‘hard having… a famous dad,'” they replied that it was “‘hard having a famous sister. Nobody cares about my dad… My sister’s picture is in the lockers everywhere.'”
A Great Way to Pass New Year’s Eve
This is not to say, of course, that Hawke is feeling at all resentful about the fact that he is no longer the most famous person with his surname. On the contrary, when Colbert asked him how he spent New Year’s with his younger daughters, he enthusiastically replied that the three of them turned on Netflix to watch “Stranger Things.” (This past December 31 saw the premiere of the show’s well-received Season 5 finale). “A lot of people in America were watching ‘Stranger Things,'” he said, “but not everybody in America was watching their daughter with their siblings right to their side. And so, we were invested… I thought Maya did a great job.”
Ethan Hawke – Still Successful, and Very Happy for His Daughter
Moreover, Hawke’s own acting career is clearly anything but flagging. In the past five years, he’s embodied a chilling new horror icon (the Grabber from “The Black Phone”) and acted in such unique period pieces as “The Northman” (2022), “Strange Way of Life” (2023), and, of course, last year’s very rapturously received “Blue Moon.” The stardom that Maya Hawke has earned (with the extra boost of her parentage, no doubt) does nothing to diminish the past and future accomplishments of her father, and he’s clearly immensely proud to see her so successfully following in his ongoing footsteps.
