Ethan Hawke has openly expressed one of his significant regrets, discussing the challenges his daughter Maya faced during her upbringing.
In a conversation with Sydney Sweeney during Variety & CNN’s “Actors on Actors,” Hawke stated: “There were a lot of things about her childhood, that were really, really hard and complicated and things I regret for her.”
Maya, recognized for her portrayal of Robin Buckley in Stranger Things, is Hawke’s eldest daughter with his former spouse Uma Thurman. Although Hawke did not specify the difficulties Maya encountered, it is known from her own accounts that she struggled with Dyslexia throughout much of her life.
While hesitant to delve deeply into the specifics of Maya’s challenging childhood, Hawke, like any proud father, expressed his pride in knowing she would pursue a career as an ‘artist’ from a young age.
“I knew that she was gonna be a very good one,” he reminisced. “That was her safe place, watercoloring, dancing, singing all throughout her childhood.”
Hawke shared that Maya found liberation in creative expression, a sentiment that extended beyond her early years.
“Anything that had to do with human communication was something she vibrated to,” he noted. “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.’”
Much like her renowned parents, Maya chose to enter the acting world, leaving the prestigious Juilliard school in New York to take on her first role in the BBC mini-series adaptation of Little Women in 2017.
Since then, she has been cast in several roles, including appearances in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Stranger Things, and Inside Out 2.
Growing up with two prominent Hollywood figures, Maya was immersed in the entertainment industry from an early age. Despite her storied family background, she has been determined to pursue roles that she feels she has genuinely earned.
She 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.”