As the daughter of accomplished actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, acting might have been inevitably inMaya Hawke’s blood, and her best movies and TV shows reflect an eclectic combination of genres and characters. Like her parents, Hawke has amassed a collection of roles that span movies, television, dramas, indie flicks, and even a few big-budget blockbusters.
Maya Hawke only made her professional acting debut on screen in 2017. With less than a decade in the business, Hawke has made quite an impression on critics and audiences. While some might be ready to point out that she is a “nepo baby,” it is also easy to see that Hawke possesses an impressive amount of talent that makes her magnetic on screen.
Stranger Things: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Maya Hawke
Most recognized as Robin, there are many sides to Maya Hawke, the young talented Stranger Things and Fear Street actress beyond her famous parents.
Just six years into her acting career, Maya Hawke appeared in a biopic. The movie is inspired by the career of novelist Flannery O’Connor and was actually directed by Hawke’s father, who also co-wrote the script.
The movie follows O’Connor as she struggles to write on her own terms and deal with a mysterious illness, which turns out to be lupus.One of the interesting aspects of the movie is that Hawke does not only play O’Connor but also some of O’Connor’s characters as she imagines different stories playing out in her mind. It gives the movie a small creative window into the mind of the author.
The movie features a fantastic performance by Hawke as the writer and her characters, but it really could have used even more of the sequences of O’Connor imagining her stories. While it paints her struggle with lupus well, it does not get to delve into her creativity quite as much.
10 Best Biopic Movies Of All Time
The biopic genre is one of the hardest to master, meaning that the greatest stand out above the rest for their detailed & skilled portrayals.
Human Capitalis something of a modernRomeo and Julietstory. It sees two young people from very different backgrounds who end up in a relationship, but it leads to tragedy and conflict between their families.The premise is a relatively common one in storytelling, but the performances here make it worth seeing play out again.
Hawke stars as a member of an upper middle-class family, but Hawke’s Shannon falls for Ian (Alex Wolff), a drug dealer. He tends to bring out the worst traits in her and it is their relationship that pulls everything about the movie’s central mystery together in the end.While the movie has been criticized for being more of a melodrama than an examination of the characters, Hawke’s performance is still compelling and even natural.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywoodis an interesting version of a what-if movie. While the focus is on a couple of actors who are down on their luck, the movie also traces the Manson family’s real-life attack on Sharon Tate, but with a very different outcome.
Maya Hawke does not have a huge role in the movie, and she is only credited as “Flower Child.” She appears as the one member of the Manson family who actually gets out of their cult-like community. That makes her notable, buther presence in the film also speaks to Tarantino’s eye for talent.While it is possible that Quentin Tarantino simply cast Hawke because he has worked with her mother in the past,the movie is also full of emerging talent who have had impressive careers since.
Margaret Qualley, Austin Butler, Mikey Madison, Victoria Pedretti, and Sydney Sweeneyall appear in the movie in small parts as well.
Hawke has a deep love of the art form that comes across here.
The Last Movie Starsis not a work of fiction in Hawke’s movies. Instead, it is a documentary that her father helmed about the work of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Their daughter requested thatEthan Hawkebe the one to tell their story when finding old interview transcripts that had not been published.
The documentary takes an interesting approach to expounding on the lives of Newman and Woodward. While some actors are present in the picture to do dramatic readings of those interview transcripts and letters, other actors are interviewed in a more traditional approach to making a documentary.
Maya Hawke appears as one of the actors interviewed alongside the likes of Sally Field, Richard Linklater, and Martin Scorcese. While it might not involve Hawke’s acting abilities, it does help movie fans see how much of a cinephile she is.Hawke has a deep love of the art form that comes across here.
Maestrois a biopic centered on American composer Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). While the movie does feature the more straightforward biopic aspects of highlighting his career, it also delves into their romance, making the movie even more of a romantic drama than most biographies would be.
Because the movie runs through a 40-year timeline, there is a very large cast of characters to support the two leads. Hawke appears as one of Bernstein and Montealegre’s daughters, Jamie. She is the child of the two who actually hears about his infidelity, which is one of the major conflicts in the movie.
While technically, this movie is amazing and might be one of the best-crafted projects that Hawke has been in, it does not rank any higher because the movie belongs to Cooper and Mulligan, not Hawke.She has better performances in many other roles.
Maestrowas nominated for seven Academy Awards, including one for both Cooper and Mulligan.
Wes Anderson’s movies are known for their pastel color pallets and their quirky sensibilities that speak to deeper themes about the human condition.Asteroid City,despite its unusual premise, fits right in with Anderson’s larger catalog, and Hawke plays a role in its large ensemble.
The premise of the movie is that a documentary about a play is being hosted in the 1950s - except this is a more futuristic version of the 1950s. The play is, of course,Asteroid City, just like the title of the movie. The play sees a group of teens coming together to be honored as well as school children on a field trip, just as aliens land and cause a little chaos before disappearing all over again. During the events of the movie, everyone is seeking some sort of connection.
Hawke’s June is a teacher. Of course,Hawke, like most of the cast, also plays multiple roles.June is the teacher within the play, so Hawke plays her as well as the actress playing the teacher. The off-beat comedy required that the actors be aware of both characters and storylines and play them just differently enough for the audience to see that.Hawke’s role is a supporting one, so she might not have received as much attention from critics, but her role is a sure sign of her being able to take on a variety of parts in the future.
The miniseries marked Maya Hawke’s screen debut.
There have been a lot ofmovie adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’sLittle Womenover the years. One of the best on the big screen is Greta Gerwig’s version of the story. One of the best for the small screen, however, is this 2017 version. Originally made for BBC, it was also broadcast on PBS in the United States. The miniseries marked Maya Hawke’s screen debut.
The three-part series is a relatively faithful adaptation of the source material. While Hawke is Jo, whose point of view makes up much ofLittle Women, the series also sees veteran teen TV actor Willa Fitzgerald as Meg, Kathryn Newton who has since joined the MCU as Amy, and Welsh actor Annes Elwy as Beth.The group has a great chemistry and warmth to them that allows the series to feel like they have been playing the March sisters for years.
Though it was Hawke’s first professional role on screen, she proved herself easily able to step into the skin of a character.Not only did her performance have the emotion and the ambition of Jo March, it also earned her a Women’s Image Network Award for Best Actress in a Made for TV Movie or Miniseries.
Though it used to take many years before Pixar would produce a sequel to a movie, it seems that sequels are actually being planned more often than not now.Inside Out 2follows up from the previous movie, seeing the main character enter her teen years and begin to experience new emotions. Those new emotions include Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy, and Ennui.
Hawke gives voice to one of those new emotions in Anxiety. Anxiety is easily the standout new character in this chapter, and Hawke does a great job at bringing the emotion to life.Anxiety takes over the “sense of self” for much of the movie, causing a spiral of self-doubt and even a panic attack. Hawke’s voice work combined with the movie’s animation made the moment all too real, even for adult viewers,makingInside Out 2an emotional viewing experiencefor many.
Inside Out 2was nominated for two Golden Globes and an Academy Award.
Hawke’s Robin quickly became a fan favorite…
Though Hawke made her professional debut in 2017,Stranger Thingsis her big break. It is one of the buzziest of Netflix shows, and she joined at the height of its popularity in season 3.
The series follows a group of friends and their family members in Hawkins, Indiana in the 1980s. The introduction of a young girl with extraordinary abilities and the disappearance of a little boy turn the turn upside down. Hawke joins the show as a coworker of one of the main characters at an ice cream parlor in the third season, but she also quickly becomes an ally for them.
Hawke was seen as an asset for the series from her debut. She has just the right amount of sarcasm and sass asRobin Buckley, but she also shares a certain amount of vulnerability, especially in her scenes with Joe Keeryas Robin comes out to Steve. Hawke’s Robin quickly became a fan favorite and even got a novel dedicated to her character.
Hawke won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Streaming Presentation for her role in the series.
ThoughStranger Thingsis really Hawke’s breakout role, it opened doors for her to appear in a lot of other projects that simply having parents in the industry might not. After two years onStranger Things, Hawke was cast in the Netflix teen thrillerDo RevengealongsideRiverdale’s Camila Mendes.
The story follows a teenager who has always been part of the popular crowd, but when intimate images of her from her boyfriend’s phone make their way around school, her reputation is tarnished. Not only do she and her boyfriend break up, but she is effectively blocked from hanging with the popular kids. When she meets an outcast while working at a tennis camp over the summer who wants revenge against the person who made fun of her years ago, the two decide to team up.
This revenge story is full of dramatic moments and twists.Hawke, however, has the most difficult role to play in the movie as she has to be a shy wallflower who is picked on in one moment and a manipulative strategist in the next.Maya Hawke turns on a dime in her scenes, and she is fantastic in the movie.
