Background and career
Maya Ray Thurman-Hawke (born July 8, 1998) is an American actor and singer-songwriter. The daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, she began her career in modeling and made her screen debut as Jo March in the 2017 BBC adaptation of Little Women. She gained international recognition for starring as Robin Buckley in the Netflix science fiction horror series Stranger Things (2019–2025). Hawke appeared in the films Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021), Do Revenge (2022), Asteroid City (2023), Maestro (2023), and Wildcat (2023), and she voiced Anxiety in Inside Out 2 (2024). As a musician, she has released the albums Blush (2020), Moss (2022), Chaos Angel (2024), and Maitreya Corso (2026).
Maya Ray Thurman Hawke was born on July 8, 1998, in New York City, to actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. Her parents met on the set of Gattaca (1997), married in May 1998, and divorced in 2005. Hawke has a younger brother, Levon. She also has two half-sisters by her father's second wife, Ryan Shawhughes, and another half-sister by her mother's ex-fiancé, financier Arpad Busson. On her father's side, Hawke is a distant cousin of playwright Tennessee Williams. On her mother's side, she is a granddaughter of Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman and model Nena von Schlebrügge. Schlebrügge's mother, Birgit Holmquist, was also a model, having posed for Axel Ebbe's statue Famntaget, currently in Smygehuk, Sweden. Hawke has dyslexia, which resulted in her changing schools frequently during her primary education before she finally enrolled at Saint Ann's School, a private school in Brooklyn, New York, that emphasizes artistic creativity and does not grade work. The artistic environment eventually led her to acting. Hawke also took part in summer studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York. She studied toward a BFA in acting at the Juilliard School for a year before dropping out after accepting her role in Little Women.
Like both her mother and grandmother, Hawke modeled for Vogue at the beginning of her career. She was also chosen as the face of the British fashion retailer AllSaints' 2016/2017 collection. In 2017, she starred as one of several faces in a video campaign for Calvin Klein's underwear range, directed by Sofia Coppola. In September 2022, Hawke modeled for Calvin Klein's FW22 Underwear campaign.
Hawke was Sofia Coppola's choice to play the title role of The Little Mermaid in Universal Pictures's live-action adaptation, but the producers preferred Chloë Grace Moretz. This and other conflicts led Coppola to leave the project in 2015. Moretz eventually dropped out as well, and the film was not produced.
Hawke made her acting debut in 2017 as Jo March in the BBC miniseries adaptation of Little Women. In September 2018, she starred in the thriller Ladyworld, directed by Amanda Kramer. Hawke later broke out with her performance as Robin Buckley in the third season of Netflix's Stranger Things, which released in July 2019. Also that year, Hawke played Linda Kasabian/'Flowerchild' in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and co-starred in Marc Meyers's thriller film Human Capital, based on Stephen Amidon's 2004 novel of the same name.
In 2020, Hawke starred in Gia Coppola's sophomore film, Mainstream, alongside Andrew Garfield. The same year, she guest starred in the fifth episode of the miniseries The Good Lord Bird, which stars her father, Ethan Hawke. She stars as Annie Brown, the daughter of her father's character. In June, she appeared in Italian Studies, written and directed by Adam Leon and co-starring Vanessa Kirby. It premiered in the Tribeca Film Festival and was released in January 2022. Later that month, she appeared as Heather in the Netflix horror film Fear Street Part One: 1994. In 2021, she also starred in a spin-off podcast series based on her Stranger Things character, Rebel Robin: Surviving Hawkins. She starred in another scripted podcast series, The Playboy Interview, in which she plays Helen Gurley Brown. In 2022, Hawke starred in Netflix's dark comedy film Do Revenge alongside Camila Mendes. In April 2022, she was cast in Bradley Cooper's biographical film about Leonard Bernstein, Maestro, co-starring Cooper and Carey Mulligan. In May, it was reported that she had been cast in the film The Kill Room alongside her mother, Uma Thurman, and Samuel L. Jackson. In July, it was announced that she would guest star in Disney's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, which premiered in 2023. She appeared in the Wes Anderson romantic dramedy Asteroid City (2023), which premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival to positive reviews. She voiced the character Anxiety in the 2024 Pixar animated film Inside Out 2, the sequel to Inside Out (2015). In February 2024, it was reported that Hawke would star in a Billy Wilder biopic titled Wilder & Me. In May 2025, Hawke was announced to lead a biopic about Irish dancer Lucia Joyce, and was also announced as a part of The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping cast, playing a younger version of Wiress.
