Maya Hawke

• 1. Introduction

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  Maya Ray Thurman Hawke was born on the 8th of July 1998 in New York City, and her story starts on a film set before she existed. Her parents, the actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, met while making Gattaca in 1997. They married in May 1998.

  Their daughter has since become an actress and a singer-songwriter, with four albums to her name. How does the child of two screen stars find a path that is her own? What does a student with dyslexia do in a school that refuses to grade her? And why would a drama student leave her training early, to take a part in a television adaptation of a classic novel?

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• 2. Roots and Schooling

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  In 2005, Hawke's parents divorced. She has a younger brother named Levon, along with three half-sisters. Two of them come from her father's marriage to Ryan Shawhughes, and one comes from her mother's former engagement to the financier Arpad Busson.

  The family tree stretches into unexpected corners. On her father's side, Hawke is a distant cousin of the playwright Tennessee Williams. Her mother's parents are the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman and the model Nena von Schlebrügge.

  Birgit Holmquist, the mother of Nena von Schlebrügge, was a model too. She posed for Axel Ebbe's statue Famntaget, which stands today in Smygehuk in Sweden.

  At Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York, nobody grades the students' work. The private school emphasizes artistic creativity, and Hawke arrived there after dyslexia had pushed her through several schools during her primary years. The artistic atmosphere eventually steered her toward acting.

  She also took summer studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York. Then she began a BFA in acting at the Juilliard School. After one year she dropped out, having accepted a part in Little Women.

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• 3. Modeling Years

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  Vogue was where Hawke first modeled, following the example of both her mother and her grandmother. The fashion work came at the very start of her career, before her screen roles.

  The British retailer AllSaints chose her as the face of its 2016-17 collection. In 2017 she appeared as one of several faces in a video campaign for Calvin Klein's underwear range, directed by Sofia Coppola. In September 2022 she returned to the brand, modeling for its FW22 underwear campaign.

  Coppola had a much bigger plan for Hawke, though, and it never reached the screen.

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• 4. Breaking Through

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  Universal Pictures once planned a live-action version of The Little Mermaid, and Sofia Coppola wanted Hawke for the title role. The producers preferred the actress Chloë Grace Moretz. That disagreement, together with other conflicts, led Coppola to leave the project in 2015. Moretz eventually dropped out as well, and the film went unproduced.

  Hawke's real debut came in 2017, when she played Jo March in the BBC miniseries adaptation of Little Women. The Women's Image Network Awards included the performance in a 2019 category for best actress in a movie or miniseries. In September 2018 she starred as Romy in the thriller Ladyworld, directed by Amanda Kramer.

  In July 2019, the third season of Netflix's Stranger Things introduced her as Robin Buckley. The part made her internationally known, and she stayed with the series as a main cast member in seasons 3-5, through 2025. The Saturn Awards listed her for best supporting actress in a streaming presentation in 2019, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards listed the show's ensemble in 2020.

  The Hollywood Critics Association TV Awards named her in a 2022 category for best supporting actress in a streaming drama. In 2021 Robin also received a spin-off podcast, Rebel Robin: Surviving Hawkins, with Hawke voicing the character again.

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• 5. Film Roles

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  Quentin Tarantino cast Hawke in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in 2019, as Linda Kasabian, who is also credited as Flowerchild. That year she also co-starred in Human Capital, a thriller directed by Marc Meyers. It is based on Stephen Amidon's 2004 novel of the same name.

  Gia Coppola's second film, Mainstream, put Hawke opposite Andrew Garfield in 2020. The same year she guest starred in the fifth episode of the miniseries The Good Lord Bird, which stars her father. She played Annie Brown, the daughter of his character.

  Italian Studies, written and directed by Adam Leon and co-starring Vanessa Kirby, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. It reached general release on the 14th of January 2022. Hawke also played Heather in the Netflix horror film Fear Street Part One: 1994.

  In 2022 she starred alongside Camila Mendes in the Netflix dark comedy Do Revenge. The MTV Movie and TV Awards listed the pair for best on-screen duo in 2023. In April 2022 she was cast as Jamie Bernstein in Maestro, Bradley Cooper's biographical film about Leonard Bernstein, with Cooper and Carey Mulligan.

  In May 2022 came a report that she would appear in The Kill Room, with her mother Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson. Wes Anderson's romantic dramedy Asteroid City premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in 2023 to positive reviews, with Hawke in the cast. That year she also played the writer Flannery O'Connor in Wildcat, and served as an executive producer on it.

  In February 2024 it was reported that she would star in Wilder & Me, a Billy Wilder biopic. In May 2025 she was announced as the lead of a biopic about the Irish dancer Lucia Joyce. She was also announced for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, as a younger version of Wiress.

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• 6. Lending Her Voice

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  Anxiety is the emotion Hawke voiced in Inside Out 2, the 2024 Pixar sequel to the 2015 film Inside Out. She later voiced the same character in the video game Disney Speedstorm. Several awards bodies recorded the performance. These include the Astra Film Awards and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association in 2024, plus the St. Louis Film Critics Association.

  The Annie Awards, in the category of outstanding achievement for voice acting in a feature production, and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists followed in 2025. Both listed Inside Out 2 among Hawke's credits.

  In July 2022, Disney announced that she would guest star in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. She voiced Abyss across three episodes, and the series premiered in 2023.

  Her voice has also carried documentaries and audio drama. In 2025 she narrated Nightmares of Nature and voiced Betsy Ambler in the television documentary The American Revolution. She narrated the documentary film Videoheaven too.

  On the scripted podcast The Playboy Interview, she plays Helen Gurley Brown. In 2023 she played Sarah Weddington in Supreme: The Battle for Roe. In 2026 she took the role of Livia in a podcast called The Summer Oath.

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• 7. Music

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  Folk music shaped Hawke's ambitions, and she names Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell among her influences. She takes inspiration from what she calls "great lyricists" such as Cohen and Bob Dylan. In her words, "music is the best way to communicate poetry."

  In August 2019 she released her first two singles, "To Love a Boy" and "Stay Open." She wrote and recorded them with Jesse Harris, a Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter. In early 2020 she headlined a series of shows around New York City, her first solo live performances as a musician. Her supporting acts were Benjamin Lazar Davis, Tōth, Will Graefe and Nick Cianci, one for each show.

  On the 18th of March 2020, she released the single "By Myself" and announced her debut album, Blush. The timing fell amid the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. She wrote, "I feel like this is not a time for self-promotion. It is a time for activation, education and self-examination."

  The second single, "Coverage," arrived on the 22nd of April 2020. Her father, Ethan Hawke, directed its music video, released on the 28th. Blush was first set for the 19th of June 2020 but slipped to the 21st of August 2020. In late August she made her first appearance as a musical guest, on The Today Show.

  Moss was announced on the 29th of June 2022, alongside the single "Thérèse," and released on the 23rd of September 2022. Hawke recorded her third studio album in April 2023. Its first single, "Missing Out," came out on the 14th of February 2024, and "Dark" followed on the 20th of March. Chaos Angel was released on the 31st of May 2024.

  To promote it, she performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Daily Show. In October 2024, four more songs from the record appeared on the Clipped Wings EP.

  The Tactless Tour ran in 2023, and the Chaos Angel World Tour followed in 2025. In March 2026 she released "Devil You Know," the lead single from Maitreya Corso, which arrived in May 2026. It came with its own run of dates, billed as An Evening With Maya Hawke: The Maitreya Corso Tour.

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• 8. Personal Life

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  Hawke says she holds no denominational beliefs, yet she is "highly optimistic that there is something." She does not claim a specific religion, and she leaves the question open.

  Christian Lee Hutson, a fellow musician and a longtime friend, became her partner in 2023. They married on the 14th of February 2026 in New York City. Many of her Stranger Things costars came to the wedding, along with Sam Nivola, Kathryn Newton and others.

  The date had appeared in her work before. The 14th of February was also the day in 2024 when she released the single "Missing Out."

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