Maya Hawke on her new music, dropping out of Juilliard and collaborating with dad, Ethan

Actress Maya Hawke is best known for her role as Robin on “Stranger Things,” but long before she discovered her love for acting, Hawke was writing songs. Now, Hawke has released his third album, “Chaos Angel.”

Hawke — who is the daughter of actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman — has been writing songs since she was a child.

“I, you know, struggled with a learning disability and it was very difficult for me to read things, but I would read — if I put things to melody, I could memorize them better,” she said. “And so, I would use them as a communication tool because I found, at least in my family, that if you communicated through art, you would be heard much more clearly.”

She studied at Juilliard for a year before leaving in 2017 after she was offered the role of Jo March in the BBC production of “Little Women.”

“It was extremely difficult and wonderful,” Hawke said of her Juilliard experience. “There’s a lot of pressure from the industry to be thin, to be attractive, to be cast, you know, to be on social media — like there’s a whole other world of work that’s so separate from what acting actually is. there.”

Hawke auditioned for Juilliard with a monologue based on author Flannery O’Connor’s diaries. That monologue became the basis for the 2023 film, “Wildcat.” Hawke starred in the film as O’Connor, collaborating with his father, who directed the film.

Hawke said she wasn’t nervous at all about working with her father.

“I was nervous talking to people about working with my dad. I still am,” she said. “Taking a flame purely based on love and – and, you know, riding the wind with her is intimidating – you know, but working together wasn’t.”

Growing up in an artistic family, Hawke said he has had an artistic conversation with his father for years.

“It’s very, very lucky,” she said. “Especially, I noticed that he started blowing up on Instagram as an art guru, and I’m his first student.”

As an actress, Hawke quickly became known for playing a certain type of role.

“I was talking to someone recently and they said, ‘Do you have a lot of anxiety?’ Hawke said. My first role that people saw me in the most was ‘Stranger Things,’ where, you know, Robin is funny and anxious and goofy and – and so, it builds a world that people feel comfortable seeing. you.

To portray the voice of Anxiety in the film “Inside Out 2,” Hawke said he stepped away from his personal life.

“I have this character that I play in my life when I’m nervous about something that I know I shouldn’t be,” Hawke explained. “And I thought, I’m going to do that in my audition. And I — hey, I kind of went into this person that I have inside of me and just let it go. And, um, and that’s how I got the part, I guess” , she said, laughing.

When Hawke finishes her acting work, she plans to tour with her new album. She says music is becoming “a more egalitarian focus in her life.”

“For me, all creativity comes from the same source, having everything you feel inside exists somewhere out there,” she said. “And if you can figure out exactly what that feeling is and capture it, it’s extremely satisfying, like capturing a firefly, and it can – if you do it well, it can light up the room.”