Maya Hawke: My parents didn't want me doing 'bit-parts' in their movies

Maya Hawke's parents didn't want her to end up doing "bit-parts" in their movies.

The 23-year-old actress is the daughter of Hollywood stars Uma Thurman, 51, and Ethan Hawke, 50, and made her screen debut as Jo March in the 2017 BBC adaptation of 'Little Women', while she is best known for her role as Robin in the third season of Netflix's 'Stranger Things.

And Maya has explained how the 'Pulp Fiction' star and the 'Magnificent Seven' actor - who split in 2003 - wanted to make sure she was old enough to be sure that she definitely wanted to follow in their footsteps and for her to forge out her own path into the acting world without their help.

In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, she said: "They were wary of the public life side of acting and the difficulties of that. They also tried to protect me from falling into acting. They wanted to ensure I had a strong enough backbone, my own passion for it and work ethic. They didn’t want to cart me along every red carpet or have me do bit-parts in their movies. Once I was old enough, and it was clear they were my choices, they were very supportive."

Elsewhere, Maya admitted she has only watched Uma and Ethan's "happy" films because she would find it distressing seeing them get hurt on screen.

She said: "It’s funny, I haven’t seen them all. Sometimes you don’t really want to watch your mom getting shot or your dad go through painful emotions, even though you know it’s pretend."

Speaking about her mother's starring roles as Ulla in the 2005 American musical comedy film 'The Producers', and Mia Wallace in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 classic 'Pulp Fiction', respectively, Maya added: "So mostly I only watch the happy ones. One of my favourite movies of my mom’s is 'The Producers' [Susan Stroman’s 2005 remake of Mel Brooks’s musical], where she’s dancing around being fabulous. That’s much more fun to see than John Travolta jamming a needle into her heart."