Maya Hawke does not have an office, but there is a spot three blocks from her apartment that does the trick. On a sunny winter’s day in New York’s West Village, the actor and musician is tucked into the nook of a cosy restaurant with a modish menu and a rustic patina. The place exudes studied nonchalance, but Hawke strikes me as less quiet luxury and more of a thrift store magpie; her hair is braided in plaits, and she wears a few fine necklaces that she absently toys with while chatting. Her baggy navy jumper was knitted by her mum. “I’m not very fancy,” she says, pulling at her top. “You’re seeing me as me right now.”
Hawke’s rise as an actor has been defined by well-chosen roles, assured performances and a taste for the kind of auteurish film-makers favoured by her parents, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. “Oh, Maya Hawke is in this?” is practically a meme thanks to her small but memorable parts as a fleet-footed Manson disciple in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, a daffy dancing-school mistress in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City and, as Leonard Bernstein’s daughter in Bradley Cooper’s Maestro. And then there is the not-so-small: her breakout role in Netflix’s cultural juggernaut Stranger Things.
