Ethan Hawke: 'People Have Childish Views of Monogamy and Fidelity'
Actor Ethan Hawke gave a new interview in which he said that people have "childish views of monogamy and fidelity." The star dated and married actress Uma Thurman, but they divorced nine years ago after claims of infidelity by Hawke surfaced.
"People have such a childish view of monogamy and fidelity," Hawke told Mr. Porter.com. "'He's cheated so he's bad; she's cheated, so she's bad,' as opposed to a recognition that our species is not monogamous. To act all indignant, that your world has been rocked because your lover wasn't faithful to you, is a little bit like acting rocked that your hair went gray."
Hawke allegedly had an affair with his children's nanny, Ryan Shawhughes, whom he is currently married to. He described the time between his divorce from Thurman and marriage to Shawhughes as "the black years" of his life.
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"It was difficult in ways I couldn't even see at the time," he told The Guardian. "There was the obvious way in which it was difficult – the death of a dream, the inability to parent in the way that you want to. But for me it was – what's that Dante quote? 'At the midpoint of my life, I've come to the part of the forest where the straight way is lost.'"
He is now happily married to his second wife and the couple has two children; Hawke was already the father of two children with Thurman. Hawke told Mr. Porter.com that his relationship with Shawhughes was "thrilling" and he was "committed to it."
"But neither she nor I know what shape the future will come in," Hawke added. "Sexual fidelity can't be the whole thing you hang your relationship on. If you really love somebody you want them to grow, but you don't get to define how that happens. They do."
Hawke most recently appeared in "Before Midnight," a continuation of a series featuring the couple Jesse and Celine.
