Ethan Hawke was training for Maya Hawke’s big day his whole life.
And despite being prepared for it, the Oscar nominee admitted that watching his and ex-wife Uma Thurman’s 28-year-old daughter marry Christian Lee Hutson in February was an emotionally difficult experience.
“I don’t know if you feel this way, but some of the most profound moments of your life are the most common,” Ethan explained to hosts Jenna Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones on Today Sept. 16. “It’s really simple. Your oldest daughter is getting married, so you’re in a situation that humanity has been doing forever, and yet your heart is ripping open.”
“The really mysterious part about it is I thought that it would be moving because it would be this great bonding moment between the two of us,” he continued. “But the truth is, she’s just thinking about the groom.”
And reflecting on Maya’s wedding also made the 55-year-old think about the passage of time, especially how “all these pivotal moments, these rites of passage in our life, they tear us up.”
Of course, as dad to Maya—as well as son Levon, 24, with the Pulp Fiction star and daughters Clementine, 18, and Indiana, 15, with wife Ryan Hawke—the Training Day actor completely understood that “it’s appropriate” for his kids to be looking forward to their futures. Still, Ethan confessed that “it kind of hurts.”
Thankfully, despite his parental woes, he was also able to find joy in the “incredible experience” of watching Maya marry Christian.
“It means a lot because she’s so happy and I love her husband,” Ethan told E! News in April. “I feel like a really lucky man to watch her be so happy and to know that she’s with somebody that I respect so much.”
As for Maya, the Stranger Things alum admitted that she was perhaps too stressed on her wedding day, a feeling she does not wish on any future brides.
“I worried so much about how everyone else's experience was going to go that I'd worked myself into a total tizzy,” she shared with People in May. “And then it happened, and I had a great time, and everyone had a great time. I didn't need to worry as much as I did."
"I wasted a lot of energy being so worried, so if I had any advice, it would be worry less," Maya said. "It's going to be great. Everyone's there to support you, do whatever you want. Don't kill yourself trying to make everybody else happy, just make yourself happy."
For a deep dive into more of your favorite stars and their kids, keep reading.
Looking more like sisters, there's one resemblance after another between the Oscar nominee and her daughters Junie Shumpert and Rue Shumpert, who she shares with NBA alum Iman Shumpert.
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It's his life, but Jake Bongiovi bears a striking resemblance to his dad, Bon Jovi lead singer Jon Bon Jovi (with wife, Dorothea Bongiovi, and their youngest son Romeo Bongiovi at the Jefferson Awards Foundation's 2017 DC National Ceremony). Fortunately, he gives love a good name, married to Millie Bobby Brown since 2024.
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Whoever said Reese Witherspoon's daughter Ava Phillippe doesn't look like her twin is as seriously disturbed as whoever said orange was the new pink.
Like mother, like daughter. Lisa Bonet and Zoë Kravitz attended the Vanity Fair Oscars party in 2015.
With their matching jumpsuits, sleek hair and glasses, Demi Moore and eldest daughter Rumer Willis looked like carbon copies. "That moment when you realize you actually are becoming your mother #twinning #imnotmad," Willis joked on Instagram in 2015.
Pictured here in 2010, pop icon Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon is a fashionista just like her mama!
You'll get a kick out of how much soccer star David Beckham and his oldest son Brooklyn Beckham look alike.
Kelly Ripa celebrated daughter Lola Consuelos' 14th birthday with this adorable 2015 pic.
Once upon a time in Hollywood...Kill Bill actress Uma Thurman twinned with her daughter Maya Hawke on the red carpet.
Years before Blue Ivy Carter made her way up the Met Gala steps alongside mom Beyoncé, she suited up alongside her lookalike dad Jay Z at the 2017 Grammys.
Days of Our Lives star Alison Sweeney and her daughter Megan got in the holiday spirit at 2015's Disney On Ice Presents Frozen at the Staples Center.
In matching bobs, Lily-Rose Depp and mom Vanessa Paradis appeared cut from the same cloth at the 2015 Chanel fall-winter Haute Couture show in Paris.
Caught red-handed: Oscar winner Julianne Moore twinning with then-tween Liv at a 2013 New York Fashion Week event.
The genetics are strong between Robin Wright and daughter Dylan Penn (in 2022), but the pull toward all-black garb is even stronger.
Everywhere you look, everywhere you go, there's another photo proving how closely Olivia Jade resembles her mom, Fuller House star Lori Loughlin.
Lincoln star Daniel Day-Lewis' son Gabriel-Kane, whose mother is French actress Isabelle Adjani, made his big runway debut at 2015 Paris Fashion Week
The truth is, in fact, out there. Gillian Anderson stunned with daughter Piper on a 2015 red carpet.
"It used to be that I didn’t see it at all," Kaia Gerber acknowledged of her resemblance to mom Cindy Crawford , "but now I will look at a picture and have to take a moment before realizing which one of us it is."
Though Colin Hanks' 2008 photo alongside dad Tom Hanks had us doing a double-take, it's actually the actor's youngest son Truman Hanks who played a young version of the Oscar winner in 2022's A Man Called Otto.