How Many Kids Does Ethan Hawke Have? What It Was Like Working With His ‘Gifted’ Daughter, Maya Hawke
Actor Ethan Hawke is known for roles in film such as Training Day and Boyhood — both of which earned him Academy Award nominations. However, there were a few years where he was in the spotlight more for his personal life. Discover how many kids he has and his experience working with his eldest daughter, Maya Hawke.
Ethan Hawke has two children with his ex-wife, Uma Thurman
Ethan gained notoriety in the ’90s for his roles in films such as Reality Bites. He also starred in the sci-fi dystopia Gattaca, where he met and began dating his co-star, Uma Thurman. The actors married in 1998 and had two children together: Maya and Levon Hawke.
Of his children, Maya is the most well-known. She made her acting debut in the 2017 BBC miniseries Little Women, portraying Jo March. Maya had a small part in the 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Her breakout role came that same year when she starred in Stranger Things Season 3 as Robin Buckley.
The actor remarried and had two more kids
In 2003, Ethan and Thurman separated amid allegations that he had been unfaithful. They finalized their divorce in 2005, and much media speculation accompanied it. This only increased when Ethan began dating Ryan Shawhughes, who had previously acted as a nanny for Maya and Levon.
Ethan maintains that there was no overlap in these relationships. He and Shawhughes married in 2008. Together, they have two daughters: Clementine and Indiana, born in 2008 and 2011, respectively. In March 2020, Maya shared a video of all four kids and their dad performing a song together on Instagram.
How Maya Hawke ended up in ‘The Good Lord Bird’
Both Hawkes (Ethan and Maya) star in the Showtime miniseries The Good Lord Bird. Ethan called it “mind-blowing” to “find yourself on a set, telling a story that you really want to tell…and your 22-year-old daughter wants to tell it with you.” He told Seth Meyers, “she’s got a grace that she gave the show that I didn’t know that we needed so badly.”
“The funny thing about it was that I really wanted Maya to play this part, and I was kind of scared to bring it up with her and kind of scared to bring it up with Showtime because I was worried they would think I was just a crazy, nepotistic dad,” said Ethan. But given her popularity in Stranger Things, “it all just kind of fell into place,” he told Meyers.
What was challenging about working with his daughter?
Ethan praised Maya for her work on the series, but he isn’t surprised by her talent. “I’ve been working with Maya since she was a little girl,” he said on Late Night. “She’s a really gifted young woman, and she always has been. We’ve always had an easy dialogue about art.
Ethan’s shortcomings were what he was worried about when the two worked together on the limited series, the final episode of which airs on November 15. “I think one of the things that was most difficult about her being on set was asking myself, ‘Am I the actor I told her I was?” he posed. “For years, I’ve been telling her to respect acting.”
