Ethan Hawke called his very public divorce from actor Uma Thurman a mortifying experience.
“It’s humiliating. It’s almost humiliating even when they’re saying positive things,” he told GQ Hype in an interview published on Monday.
The pair married in 1998 after meeting on the set of the dystopian thriller “Gattaca,” which came out in 1997.
They separated in 2003, and Thurman filed for divorce one year later. The split was finalized in 2005.
Talking about their relationship, Hawke said there was a special type of enchantment that springs from an on-set romance.
Likening it to a game of Spin the Bottle, he said, “There’s a certain intimacy to the work that we do. Imaginative intimacy. It’s such a high. It feels dangerous and thrilling.”
Those feelings weren’t built to last long in the real world, however, according to Hawke.
Kurt Krieger – Corbis via Getty Images
“It turns the temperature up in your life. It can be like falling in love at summer camp,” he said. “It doesn’t have any connection to the dailiness of real life. That’s the danger of it.”
The “Before Sunrise” actor had previously talked about fame factoring into their divorce.
“To be honest, it was an undue pressure on my marriage,” he told Parade magazine in 2006. “I didn’t like being famous when I was single, and what it did to my celebrity status to be married to another famous person was a huge pressure, one I didn’t enjoy. And it had nothing to do with her. Nothing to do with her.”
In a separate interview with Parade earlier that year, Thurman was careful not to speak ill of her ex.
“I cannot participate in anything critical about my children’s father,” the “Kill Bill” star said of Hawke, with whom she shares daughter Maya Hawke, 27, and son Levon Hawke, 23.
“I just need to keep peace,” Thurman went on. “I think it’s fair to say that I haven’t said one mean thing, and I’m not going to start now. It’s terrible for my family.”
