Ethan Hawke, the 55-year-old Hollywood actor best known for Dead Poets Society and the Before trilogy, left fellow showbiz veteran Drew Barrymore blushing with a romantic admission during an October 16 appearance on her eponymous talk show.
“I don’t think I remember a time in my life when I was not aware of you. What I can’t believe is that we never dated,” he said.
As the clip went viral in the following days, though, netizens reacted very differently from the host to Hawke’s words, with several using the opportunity to revisit an old controversy surrounding his first marriage.
“I remember what you did to Uma,” one person wrote, urging Barrymore to “be careful.”
Ethan Hawke’s cheating scandal faces renewed scrutiny after romantic confession to Drew Barrymore
Hawke appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show to promote the second season of his FX series, The Lowdown.
Barrymore introduced him as a heartthrob of the 1990s, leading the actor to return the compliment by saying that he had found her charming back in the day, too.
“Where were you, Ethan?” Barrymore said in response, adding, “What wouldn’t I and every other girl on the planet have given to date you?”
Hawke continued his confession, revealing that he had hoped Barrymore would attend the same parties he did. She promptly pointed out that he could have simply called her.
“We still had phones back then,” she said.
The actor explained that his desire to play it cool and let things happen naturally had resulted in missed opportunities between them.
Barrymore threw herself back on the couch before playfully reprimanding him, lamenting, “And look what happened. Nothing.”
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As their playful exchange circulated online, several users urged Barrymore to take Hawke’s words with a pinch of salt.
The reason?
“This guy flirts with anyone and everyone.”
The discussion, however, soon turned from amusing to serious, with several commenters branding him the “most romantic cheater” in reference to his marriage to Uma Thurman.
Hawke and Thurman split amid rumors of his affair with their children’s nanny
The actors met on the set of the science-fiction thriller Gattaca in 1996 and quickly fell in love.
Hawke later described their immediate connection as “chasing cinematic enchantment” and likened striking up a real-life romance on set to “summer camp.”
The pair married in May 1998 after roughly a year of dating and welcomed their daughter, Maya, that same year.
Their family grew in 2002 with the arrival of their son, Levon.
However, their marriage began to unravel the following year.
The breakdown of their relationship was widely attributed to rumors of Hawke’s alleged infidelity involving the family’s nanny, Ryan Shawhughes.
Although the actor vehemently denied the allegations between 2003 and 2005, the period during which his divorce from Thurman was being finalized, he began publicly dating Shawhughes after the separation was completed in 2005.
The couple married three years later, in 2008, and have since welcomed two daughters.
“I love Ryan tremendously,” Hawke said of his wife in 2009.
Pairing this detail with what the actor recently told Barrymore, one X user wrote, “He just wants everyone.”
“This guy is a dog,” another remarked, while a third called him “Sc*m.”
Hawke, for his part, had previously discussed the emotional toll his separation from Thurman took on him.
Ethan Hawke admitted feeling embarrassed as his split from Uma Thurman played out in the public eye
“It’s humiliating. It’s almost humiliating even when they’re saying positive things,” Hawke said in a 2025 interview with GQ Hype, reflecting on the media coverage surrounding his breakup with Thurman.
Although the pair had fallen in love while working together, the actor later suggested that co-stars should avoid romantic relationships, arguing that the thrill of an on-screen romance could never be replicated in real life.
He also revealed that he struggled with depression following his split from the Kill Bill star.
According to Hawke, the couple’s marriage hit a rough patch in 2001, following his Oscar nomination for Training Day.
“In a lot of ways, it could have been the beginning of something. It was the best moment in my career,” he told GQ. “But I got divorced, and my personal life fell apart.”
“I don’t know if you feel this way, but when you’re depressed, it’s really easy to see everything that is fake about other people and life, and I just started seeing that,” Hawke continued.
“How phony celebrity was, how phony everything is. You channel your inner Holden Caulfield, you know?”
Meanwhile, Hawke’s confession to Barrymore did not only elicit negative reactions.
For some viewers, the exchange brought back memories of Nicole Kidman revealing her crush on Jimmy Fallon a decade earlier.
Jimmy Fallon was left stunned after realizing he blew a chance with Nicole Kidman
Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Images
In 2015, Nicole Kidman appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and recalled an earlier encounter with the host.
“I don’t know if you remember this, but we met before,” she said.
“Oh, I remember,” Fallon replied.
He explained that a mutual friend named Nick had called to tell him he was coming over to his apartment with the Australian actress.
At the time, Fallon assumed the visit might have something to do with potentially starring alongside Kidman in Bewitched.
“I just remember I liked you,” Kidman quickly interjected.
She attempted to explain her side of the story, but Fallon struggled to process what he had just heard.
“Wait, what?” he said. “Did I date Nicole Kidman? Was that a date?”
Kidman confirmed that the meeting was intended to be romantic but admitted that it went “so bad.”
“I go over there, and you’re there in a baseball cap and nothing, and you wouldn’t talk,” she recalled.
“And then you put a video game on or something, and I’m like, ‘He has no interest; this is so embarrassing.’ And I left.”
Fallon responded by getting up from his seat and kicking the air in disbelief.
“This is just the reverse of the Fallon-Kidman story,” one netizen remarked, drawing a comparison between the two celebrity confessions.
“His game is insane,” another said about Hawke
