Ethan Hawke is usually so fiercely guarded, but he has shed some rare light on what he went through following his divorce from Kill Bill actress Uma Thurman in 2005.
The Training Day actor said the public scrutiny foisted upon him at the time was comparable to highly flammable fuel in an interview with UK’s The Times.
‘The public eye is like gasoline,’ he said, ‘but what makes divorce hard is the stuff that makes it hard for everyone: the family elements, how to help the kids through it.’
Hawke, 55, and Thurman, also 55, were married in 1998 and had two children together, Maya, 27, and Levon, 23.
Their union didn’t last and they separated in 2003 before their divorce was made final two years later.
Clearly, it was a painful period for Hawke, who shared, ‘I’m so envious of people who have amicable splits.’
Ethan Hawke, 55, has shed some rare light on what he went through following his divorce from Kill Bill actress Uma Thurman in 2005; pictured on November 15
Years ago, the sensitive star pledged his daughter and son to keep the details of the divorce off-limits from the public.
‘I can’t really talk about this because I vowed to my kids so many times not to talk about the divorce in public,’ he said.
‘But one thing I will say is if you get the privilege of traveling the world, you realize that everywhere men and women have a tremendous amount of difficulty staying married.’
In an interview with GQ in 2018, Hawke revealed he’d gone through a deep depression when he and Thurman broke up.
He became suspicious around some people and questioned their intensions.
‘I got divorced and my personal life fell apart,’ Hawke confessed. ‘I don’t know if you feel this way, but when you’re depressed it’s really easy to see everything that is fake about other people and life, and I just started seeing all that. How phony celebrity was, how phony everything is.’
But the love of his children and work in film and theater rescued Hawke from the abyss.
‘That’s the wonderful thing about children is they just need you every day. It gives your life balance. Meaning your whole life isn’t just about yourself,’ he said.
Ethan and Uma, pictured in happier days in 2001, were married in 1998 and had two children together, but separated in 2003 before their divorce was made final two years later
Years ago, the sensitive star pledged his daughter Maya and son Levon to keep the details of the divorce off-limits from the public; pictured in 2013
Ethan also shares two daughters, Clementine, 17, and Indiana, 14, with wife Ryan; pictured on a family vacation in St. Barts in December 2022
In October 2005, two months after the split was finalized, Thurman told Oprah Winfrey that divorce was ‘excruciating’ and her self-esteem was ‘pretty mangled.’
‘You can move on, and you can be lucky and you can seize the moment and you can take one step after another,’ the Boston-born beauty said about how she was coping.
‘You bear two children with somebody – that’s not a small thing – and then you can hardly talk to them,’ she added wistfully.
A year later, Thurman expressed that she wanted to ‘keep peace.’
‘I cannot participate in anything critical about my children’s father. I just need to keep peace,’ she told Parade in 2006. ‘I think it’s fair to say that I haven’t said one mean thing, and I’m not going to start now. It’s terrible for my family.’
Hawke has been married to second wife Ryan Shawhughes since 2008.
‘When I split up I was hellbent on not having any more kids and I wanted to be single for the rest of my life. But then I made a best friend and I liked kissing her,’ he told The Times.
They met when she was the nanny for his kids with Thurman but reconnected after the divorce.
Uma, pictured with Maya and Levon in 2023, has said she won’t say anything critical of her children’s father
Ethan and current wife Ryan met when she worked as a nanny for his kids with Uma, but he insists they didn’t reconnect until much later
‘I know people imagine some kind of Sound of Music type love affair, but the truth is by the time Ryan and I were falling in love, it had been a long while since I had employed her,’ Hawke told The Guardian in 2006.
The actor and Ryan share two daughters, Clementine, 17, and Indiana, 14.
Thurman was engaged to French financier Arpad Busson, with whom she shares daughter Luna, 13, until their eventual split in 2014.
