Ethan Hawke candidly shared his thoughts on the “hard” part of divorce years after his 2005 split from Uma Thurman.
“The public eye is like gasoline, but what makes divorce hard is the stuff that makes it hard for everyone — the family elements, how to help the kids through it,” Hawke told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.
“I’m so envious of people who have amicable splits,” the “Training Day” star, 55, added.
But Hawke — who has rarely spoken directly about his high-profile divorce — quickly shut down any further discussion on the topic, citing a promise he made to his children.
“I can’t really talk about this because I vowed to my kids so many times not to talk about the divorce in public,” he told the outlet.
“But one thing I will say is if you get the privilege of traveling the world, you realize that everywhere men and women have a tremendous amount of difficulty staying married.”
“When I split up I was hellbent on not having any more kids and I wanted to be single for the rest of my life. But then I made a best friend and I liked kissing her,” he said of his current wife, Ryan Shawhughes, and their daughters, Clementine, 17, and Indiana, 14.
In September, Hawke reflected on the media coverage of his breakup with Thurman, 55, in an interview with GQ, describing the experience as “humiliating.”
“It’s almost humiliating even when they’re saying positive things,” he said at the time, adding that his relationship with the “Pulp Fiction” actress was “a result of [him] chasing cinematic enchantment” after they met on the set of the 1997 film “Gattaca.”
When asked why he felt actors tend to fall in love on set, the “Dead Poets Society” actor compared the “imaginative intimacy” actors engage in on set to playing spin the bottle.
“It’s such a high. It feels dangerous and thrilling,” he noted.
“It turns the temperature up in your life,” Hawke continued. “It can be like falling in love at summer camp. It doesn’t have any connection to the dailiness of real life. That’s the danger of it.”
Hawke and Thurman tied the knot a year after they met and went on to welcome two children together: daughter Maya, 27, and son Levon, 23.
The “Kill Bill” star eventually filed for divorce from Hawke in 2005 amid rumors that Hawke was having an affair with Shawhughes, who formerly worked as the couple’s nanny.
After their split, Hawke went on to date and eventually marry Shawhughes in 2008.
Thurman moved on with hedge fund manager Arpad Busson, with whom she shares daughter Luna. The couple eventually called it quits on their on-again, off-again romance in 2014, six years after they announced their engagement.
