In a recent interview, Ethan Hawke discussed his marriage and divorce with Uma Thurman, and said he was "too young." The "Before Midnight" actor also said he was "absolutely wrong" in deciding a wedding was a good idea.
Hawke interviewed with Elle Magazine, and said he didn't know enough about love to make his 6-year marriage to Thurman work.
"Success when you're young is really overwhelming. 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," he said. "There was this discovery that the male brain isn't done until 28. I definitely think my frontal lobe was not finished. I had no business taking vows that would last more than two weeks."
He jumped into marriage at the age of 27, and for all the wrong reasons, according to the Huffington Post. Despite the difficulties of the marriage, Hawke said it taught him a lot and prepared him for the rest of his life.
"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."
The couple got married in 1998 and divorced in 2004, after allegations that Hawke had cheated with their children's nanny, Ryan Shawhughes. He claimed they didn't begin a relationship until after he and Thurman got divorced. Hawke and Shawhughes got married in 2008, and have two children together, adding to the two that Hawke has with Thurman.