Ethan Hawke Regrets Uma Thurman Marriage, Was ‘Too Young’
Actor Ethan Hawke was married to Uma Thurman between 1998 and 2005, but the way he tells it, he regrets having tied the knot so young.
In an interview with Elle, the 42-year-old actor said that marriage in Hollywood is the same as marriage anywhere else: It’s an important part in getting ahead and creating stability.
“Success when you’re young is really overwhelming,” he said. “The world felt out of control. And I wanted to stop it from spinning so fast. I thought marriage would decrease my variables or something. I was absolutely wrong.”
When he married Thurman, Hawke was 27-years-old, but already a Hollywood heavyweight. They met on the set of Gattaca in 1996 and were hitched the next year.
For his part, Hawke does seem to regret his marriage to Uma Thurman, but not because of anything she ever did.
“There was a discovery that the male brain isn’t done until 28,” Hawke explains of his age when he married Thurman, “I definitely think my frontal lobe was not finished. I had no business taking vows that would last more than two weeks.”
They split in 2003 amid rumors that he had been unfaithful (which he denies) and finalized their divorce in 2005.
So does he have any advice for his fellow celebs who are unmarried? He points to Derek Jeter, who prefers to wait until his limelight is over before settling down.
“He lives his life like, ‘Hey man, I play shortstop for the New York Yankees. And I’m not going to get married until I’m no longer a shortstop for the New York Yankees.’ Which is incredibly smart.”
But Hawke did remarry in 2008 to his children’s former nanny, Ryan Shawhughes. He said that lessons from his first marriage to Uma Thurman have informed his second.
“Through the failure of my first marriage I learned a lot about myself. Until you know yourself, you don’t know how to share your life with another person,” he said.
“And this may sound too self help-y, but when I was a young man, I had all these ideas about who I wanted to be. But they weren’t totally rooted in the truth.”
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