Ethan Hawke’s teenage daughters are keeping him humble.
Ethan revealed during a Monday, January 5, appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert that his eldest child, Stranger Things star Maya Hawke, 27, is better recognized among peers of his youngest children, Clementine, 17, and Indiana, 14.
The Oscar nominee admitted that Maya’s role in one of the biggest shows in the world has “upstaged” his own career in some ways. This was no more evident than when his youngest kids visited the set of his recent comedy-drama, The Lowdown.
“We shot it down in Tulsa, my wife [Ryan Shawhughes] was a producer on the show, we brought the whole family down,” he explained. “The kids went to public school there in Tulsa. The kids came to visit me on set and the director says, ‘Is it hard having a famous dad when you’re at a new school?’”
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Ethan continued, “They were like, ‘It’s hard having a famous sister. Nobody cares about my dad. … My sister’s picture is in the lockers everywhere.’”
Like millions of other people around the world, the Blue Moon actor, 55, stayed up into the early hours of Thursday, January 1, to catch his daughter and her costars in the series finale of Stranger Things.
“A lot of people in America were watching Stranger Things, but not everybody was watching their daughter [in Stranger Things] with their siblings to the side. We were invested,” Ethan said.
The proud dad continued to gush over Maya’s role as Robin Buckley, adding, “I have to say, hats off. I thought Maya did a great job. I thought the whole show did a great job.”
Ethan shares Maya and son Levon, 23, with his ex-wife, Kill Bill actress Uma Thurman. Both Maya and Levon have followed in their parents’ footsteps in Hollywood. (Ethan shares Clementine and Indiana with Shawhughes, whom he wed in 2008.)
Ethan recently opened up about feeling remorse about aspects of Maya’s childhood.
“There were a lot of things about her childhood that were really, really hard and complicated, and things I regret for her,” Ethan told Sydney Sweeney of his eldest daughter in a December 2025 conversation for Variety & CNN’s “Actors on Actors.”
While the actor didn’t go into detail about Maya’s struggles, he said that he knew she was going to “be an artist” when she was “about 4.”
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“I knew that she was gonna be a very good one,” he said. “That was her safe place — watercoloring, dancing, singing all throughout her childhood.”
“Anything that had to do with human communication was something she vibrated to,” he recalled. “I remember some teacher said, ‘Maya, are you happy?’ [because] they were worried about her. And she said something to the effect of, ‘Do you really think that’s the question?’”
Ethan continued, “I thought, ‘I love this kid.’ 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.’”
