Hawke’s marital mistakes

last updated 8 January 2015

Ethan Hawke thinks it’s a bad idea for men to marry young, said Mickey Rapkin in Elle. In 1998, the then-27-year-old actor wed fellow Hollywood star Uma Thurman, hoping that the marriage would provide some stability in his increasingly chaotic life. “Success when you’re young is really overwhelming,” says Hawke, now 42. “The world felt out of control. And I wanted to stop it from spinning so fast. I thought marriage would decrease my variables or something. I was absolutely wrong.” The couple divorced six years later, amid rumors of Hawke’s infidelity. “There was this discovery that the male brain isn’t done until 28. I definitely think my frontal lobe was not finished. I had no business taking vows that would last more than two weeks.” While Hawke is now a happily married family man—he wed his second wife, Ryan, in 2008—the father of four wishes he’d spent more time enjoying the single life. “My personal opinion? The guy who’s got it right is Derek Jeter,” he says, referring to the New York Yankees player who has dated A-list beauties like Jessica Biel, Mariah Carey, and Minka Kelly. “He lives his life like, ‘Hey man, I play shortstop for the Yankees. And I’m not going to get married until I’m no longer a shortstop for the Yankees.’ Which is incredibly smart.”