The Untold Truth Of Maya Hawke

"Stranger Things" returned for its fourth season in 2022, and, according to Netflix, Season 4, Volume 1 was the "the biggest English language TV series debut on Netflix of all time." According to Nielsen (via CNBC), "Stranger Things" was "the most watched Netflix original series we've ever analyzed." Showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer rediscovered their groove, as Wired put it, but their nostalgic blend of all-things '80s wouldn't be quite as fun to watch if it wasn't for the talented ensemble cast. Season 4 saw the return of all the fan-favorites, including Season 3's breakout star, Maya Hawke. 

Hawke had made a huge impact during Season 3 as Robin Buckley, the former classmate and current co-worker of Joe Keery's Steve Harrington. The character played a vital role in unravelling the mystery threat hanging over Hawkins in "Stranger Things" Season 3, and put Hawke on the map. However, her role on "Stranger Things" wasn't the first time the actor had been in front of the camera. "Maya is an incredibly smart, fearless, strong, young woman," Gia Coppola, who directed Hawke in her drama flick "Mainstream," said (via WWD). "I've learned so much about how to approach life by just being around her. It's no doubt she's going be a big star." She is clearly destined for the A-List, but where did she come from? This is the untold truth of Maya Hawke.

If her name didn't give it away, then her familiar face surely did. Maya Hawke is the daughter of Hollywood stars Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. The now-divorced former couple met on the set of the 1997 sci-fi flick "Gattaca," and welcomed their daughter the following year (a son, Levon, followed in 2002, who joined older sister Maya on the set of "Stranger Things" for Season 4). When Maya sat down with The Sydney Morning Herald in 2017, the up-and-coming actor revealed that she spent her childhood going between her mom's place in Manhattan and her dad's pad in Brooklyn. "There are things that are hard about coming from a divorced family, but having two houses is not one of those things," she said. "It's about the dynamic."

Her parents finalized their divorce in 2005, as cheating rumors about her dad (who went on to marry former family nanny, Ryan Shawhughes) swirled. Maya now has three younger half-sisters, and she loves them all equally. "The more independence that I get and the more freedom that I have, the more interested I am in being a dedicated and involved family member," she told Vogue. "My family is really supportive. We fight and we talk and we lie and we tell the truth — not usually in that order — and I really enjoy growing with them and fostering that dynamic."

According to the critics, Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood" is his best film in years. It's the director's ninth movie, and the first time he's worked with Maya Hawke — she plays a minor character named Flower Child in the filmmaker's '60s-set love letter to Los Angeles. This wasn't the first time they met, however. During a 2018 interview with Elle, Hawke recalled being on the set of Tarantino's "Kill Bill," one of her mother's most iconic movies. The family relocated to China for six months during the shoot, and Hawke (just four years old at the time) would "watch my mom get the s*** kicked out of her while I ate gummy bears."

Tarantino has described Uma Thurman as his "muse" in the past, likening their working relationship to that of Alfred Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman. For Hawke, getting to work with the modern-day auteur was a real full-circle moment. "I grew up around Quentin and around those movies," she told ET at the "Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood" premiere. "They meant a lot to me and the story of my family and my growing up, so it's wonderful to add my own little piece to the puzzle. It was wonderful to follow [in my mother's] footsteps, just for a second, in that way, and relate to her and experience some of what she experienced."

Maya Hawke's first on-screen role was in the PBS miniseries "Little Women" (2017), produced by the BBC. The celebrity scion played aspiring writer Jo March in the three-part adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's coming-of-age classic. She described the experience as "a combination of total familiarity and total alienation" in a 2019 interview with WWD. "I'm so used to being on set, but the idea that I would be the one getting into costume was ... I was like, 'Me? Okay. I guess so. Sure.'" The critics loved the show (it was Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a score of 84%), and so did Maya's dad.

"It's one of the most amazing moments of my life watching her in 'Little Women,'" Ethan Hawke told People. "She didn't do a good job, she did a great job. To see your child thrive, and to see her thrive at a profession that you have a lot of respect for, that I've dedicated my life to, I was so proud of her." The four-time Oscar nominee was equally enamored with his daughter's performance in "Stranger Things" Season 3, taking to Instagram to heap praise on her. "Ladies and gentlemen, get to know MAYA HAWKE," Ethan wrote in part. "She's the real thing." Maya's "Stranger Things" co-star Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler) approved of the post. "Yay Dad!" the young actor replied (via Metro).

Maya Hawke was diagnosed with dyslexia in the third grade, and she has struggled with it since. "I went from school to school to school, looking for the right place for me," she said during her sit-down with The Sydney Morning Herald. She eventually learned to read and write, but it didn't come easily for her. As a student she would get by using audiobooks — until she was introduced to "Little Women," that is. Louisa May Alcott's beloved novel was the first book that Hawke read from cover to cover, which is why she jumped at the chance to play the story's protagonist, Jo March.

"Jo was a literary heroine of mine, especially when I was struggling with my dyslexia growing up," Hawke revealed. "Her ambition, courage and drive to overcome her obstacles really inspired me. And I always related to her clumsiness, her curiosity, her stubbornness, her always putting her foot in her mouth. When I heard the BBC was making 'Little Women,' I rushed to audition." Coincidentally, her landing the role of Jo gave her a unique connection to her "Stranger Things" co-star, Winona Ryder (Joyce Byers), who has also portrayed the character. "I did get to speak to [Ryder] about it at the cast dinner beginning 'Stranger Things,'" Hawke told Vulture. "We just talked about what a wonderful honor it is to get to embody a person like that."

After her dyslexia diagnosis, Maya Hawke enrolled in a school specially equipped for her needs. "When you're growing up with a learning disability, it shoots your confidence and belief in what you can accomplish academically," she told Vogue. She went on to attend Saint Ann's (an institution in Brooklyn Heights that focuses on the arts) and eventually landed a coveted spot at the world famous Juilliard School. "I learned more in one year at that school than almost the rest of my life put together," she told Vulture. She loved her time at Juilliard, which made her decision to drop out an "incredibly difficult" one.

When Hawke was offered the lead role in "Little Women," she had to choose between her dream school and her dream role, and she picked the latter. Unfortunately, that meant she could never go back. "Juilliard has a zero-tolerance policy for absences due to work," Hawke told The Sydney Morning Herald. "I only would have missed five days, and I wrote them a really nice letter asking them please to take me back, but I was ready to accept the repercussions of my choice." Despite her respect for the school, she knew leaving was the right move. "I wanted my own apartment and job, and I wanted to move on to the next chapter of what my life was going to be."

Robin Buckley went down extremely well with fans of "Stranger Things," but the version of the character that Matt and Ross Duffer created ahead of Season 3 wasn't the one eventually seen on screen. Speaking to WWD, Maya Hawke revealed that the sibling showrunners tweaked the character after they got to know her a little better. "I'm a super joyful, exuberant person, especially on set," the actor said. "I bring a lot of energy, maybe from nerves or something, but they kind of tapped into that and then started to write the character more along those lines."

When she accepted the part, Hawke was told that Robin was a sarcastic and down-to-earth Madonna wannabe who nobody seemed to notice — but Robin slowly morphed into someone closer to Hawke's own personality. Interestingly, Robin's biggest character moment wasn't actually set in stone from the start. Speaking to Variety at the premiere of "Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood," Hawke revealed that she and the Duffers didn't decide that Robin should be a lesbian until they were around halfway through filming the season. "It was kind of a collaborative conversation, and I'm really, really happy with the way that it went," she said.

Before Robin revealed her sexuality on "Stranger Things," everyone seemed to be shipping her and Steve Harrington (Joe Keery). When Dustin told Steve that his cool co-worker was the right girl for him, everyone agreed. And when Robin admitted that she'd been obsessed with Steve at school while the pair were tied up together in the Russian bunker during Episode 6, the stars seemed to be aligning. Then, in the following episode, Robin revealed that her obsession stemmed from the fact that the girl she liked had a major crush on Steve, who took a few seconds to comprehend what she was telling him. Still, just because their characters weren't destined to be together doesn't mean they couldn't be together in real life, right?

Wrong. According to Seventeen, Keery has been dating Maika Monroe since they met on the set of "After Everything." But what about Maya Hawke? As of 2017, she revealed to The Sydney Morning Herald that she was single. "I think I scare men," she joked. "I was given the impression that being 19 and single in the world means you'll be fending off the wolves, but I can't find a wolf to save my life." Her relationship status seems to have changed since then, however. Although she hasn't confirmed it, Hawke seems to be dating musician Spencer Barnett, as of this writing, per HITC.

Coming into an established show as a new character is never easy, as Maya Hawke discovered when she arrived on the set of "Stranger Things." "It was hard to find my footing," she told WWD. "But everyone who works on the show loves the show, everyone is really devoted to it, and so it was probably only me that made it hard, just psychologically." Luckily, Hawke's character was part of a "new family" for Season 3. The vast majority of her scenes were with a combination of Joe Keery, Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson), and Priah Ferguson (Erica Sinclair), affectionately known as the Scoops Troop.

"I think that I came in really excited to join and to play and to become a part of it, and I was lucky because the group of people that I came into ... like, Dustin and Steve and Erica, have not spent that much time together," she told Collider. The Scoops Troop "needed its own new identity ... that I got to contribute to equally." Executive producer Shawn Levy admitted that putting these four characters together "doesn't make any sense" on paper, but it turned out to be an inspired move. "One of the great skills of the Duffers and of our show, I think, is trying pairings that we've never done before," Levy said on the "Behind The Scenes: Stranger Things 3" podcast (via PopBuzz).

When your parents are Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, people automatically assume that you're also going to become an actor, but the A-List celebs' first-born was initially hesitant to follow in their footsteps. "I resisted it a little bit because it was the family business, until I realized that it made me the most happy and that it was what I was the best at," Maya Hawke told WWD. At one stage she considered going to college to study English, but she ultimately decided that nothing could match the thrill she got from acting. "I didn't like studying for my SAT, didn't like writing essays, but I felt so alive and capable in the theater at my school, and how do you say no to that?"

Both her mom and her dad expressed their joy via their respective Instagram accounts when she made her debut on "Stranger Things," but they were probably just being supportive, right? Not according to Maya. "I know my parents don't B.S. me," she said during an appearance on "The Jenny McCarthy Show." "They're pretty rigorous in terms of their commentary when they like something or don't." Her folks are clearly thrilled that she's making an impact in the industry, but Maya insists that she was never forced into acting. "There was no pressure," she added. "It was that I love [acting] more than anything else."

Acting is the biggest love in her life, but Maya Hawke also likes to write music. The "Stranger Things" star put on her first public performance in 2019, bringing her brand of folksy jazz to New York's Rockwood Music Hall. "I'm more nervous about it than any other part of my life," she told WWD. "I'm not trying to say I'm an awesome musician or anything like that — I'm not. But I love music and I love lyrics and songwriting. ... People aren't that interested in poetry these days, but lyrics are a way to present poetry to the world where they know how to take it in and how to absorb it."

Music is also an essential part of "Stranger Things." The show blends classic '80s tunes with an original, synth-laden score, and for the most part it works brilliantly (some of the musical choices in Season 3 were a little too on-the-nose, according to MixMag). When Hawke sat down for a quick chat with Consequence of Sound in 2019, she revealed that her character, Robin, prefers music from the previous two decades. "She would love Patti Smith and Bob Dylan. Joan Jett and The Runaways. I think she has some nostalgia for '60s and '70s rock."

Maya Hawke always looks well put together, but when it comes to fashion, she isn't your typical rich girl. When The Sydney Morning Herald asked which designers she was wearing during the interview, she refused to say. "This isn't how I normally dress," Hawke insisted. "I'm going to a birthday party, so I'm kind of dressed up. These are my mum's clothes — I stole them. And I don't want to be written about as this girl who's wearing this ridiculously expensive outfit." She told the Australian outlet that she usually opts for a stripy T-shirt and double denim, a style she described as "an attempt at a contemporary Annie Hall."

Like most women her age, Hawke does care about how she looks, but "in a way that is about comfort and practicality," she explained. "I always want to look like me." While she takes inspiration from the eponymous character in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" (played by Diane Keaton), Hawke also has a real-life style icon — her "Little Women" co-star, Angela Lansbury. "She is 92 years old and full of energy, and she is beautiful," Hawke told Vogue in 2017. "Her face is still her face. She dresses awesome, and she has been working as an actress forever — ever since she was doing vaudeville with her mum."

Speaking with The Sydney Morning Herald in 2017, Maya Hawke revealed that, unlike the vast majority of her peers, she wasn't really that into social media. "I'm not particularly interested in my phone," she admitted. "I'm interested in human contact. I think phones have created a certain social incapacity; it's made people socially deficient. And if it's fun to spend time alone, then there's not the incentive to go out and meet people and make yourself vulnerable." Her Instagram account was private at the time, but (either because she realized interacting with fans was important or simply because she had a change of heart) she later went public.

The actor has become a star on the platform, thanks in no small part to her casting in "Stranger Things." "I wasn't aware of how insanely popular [the show] was," she told Vulture in 2018. "It got announced and I got, like, 40,000 Instagram followers in, like, 30 seconds. I didn't expect that to happen. I don't think I'll fully understand what kind of impact it will have on my life until after it comes out." When Season 3 of "Stranger Things" dropped on July 4, 2019, she experienced an even bigger surge, and that number has just continued to grow. As of this writing, she has over 4.7 million people who follow her exploits on Instagram.

Fame comes with a lot of attention — sometimes wanted — other times, not so much. It is therefore not surprising that, more often than not, celebrities face vicious attacks from online trolls. And even though Maya Hawke has been around for far less longer than many in the industry, she has also had her fair share of negative social media attention. In 2020, the "Fear Street" actor recounted reading negative comments about herself as a teenager. "I decided to read the comments and they were like, 'Oh, too bad she doesn't look like her mom,'" Hawke told USA Today. "'God, they've got all that money and they're not going to fix her teeth? She needs a nose job.' And I was 14! I hadn't gone through puberty. It was going to get better, but I didn't know that at the time."

These days, Hawke is less than bothered about trolls and would rather focus her energy on acting — something she apparently does fantastically well!

If there is one thing parents will always do, it is look out for their kids — and not even celebrities are left out of that aspect. Maya Hawke's mom, Uma Thurman, has in the past admitted to being nervous about her daughter's love for acting. "It's a complicated career," she told Access in a February 2022 interview. "One so much public facing often. And she's a sensitive person." Thurman, however, also said she understands that Hawke can only express her creativity through acting.

In the same light, Hawke had previously recounted to The Guardian in 2021 how her parents initially tried to shield her from the dangers of fame. "They were wary of the public life side of acting and the difficulties of that," she told the outlet. "They wanted to ensure I had a strong enough backbone, my own passion for it and work ethic."

With Ethan Hawke as a father and Uma Thurman as a mother, it was almost a given that Maya Hawke would end up in the film industry — and even she believes that. The "Stranger Things" star has, however, made it clear that her parents did not push her into acting, but only supported her. "They encouraged me to make a really conscious decision," Maya said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "My parents are very loving and intuitive and talented people, and eventually it became clear, not just to me, but to them that was what I was supposed to do."

Now that Maya is certain she was made to act, the "Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood" star is open to exploring the different aspects of her career choice. "I want to do everything. I want to do comedy. I want to do drama. I like period pieces," she told Glamour in 2021. "I want to be as versatile and experimental as I possibly can and keep working on my craft, even if now it has to be in the public eye. I just want to keep practicing and making mistakes and trying things." We can't wait to see what the future has in store for the talented actor!

Several celebrities would rather not be in the spotlight, but Maya Hawke apparently does not mind so much and seems to be handling it pretty well. "It's the job, you know?" she told W in a 2021 interview. "It's not awesome. Like, it doesn't feel good getting mauled at the 'Stranger Things' premiere or whatever, but that's not what most of life is like. It's like that for five minutes. And I love my work — I feel really lucky that I get to do it the way that I get to do it." 

But even though she has steadily come to grace our screens over the past few years, and many now consider her famous, Hawke does not think she is. "I think the benefit of growing up with famous parents is that the barometer of fame is really high," she admitted to W. Like her parents, Hawke is not so impressed by fame, but rather by the impact she can make through her art. They definitely seem like a well-grounded family.