Ethan Hawke opened up to British newspaper The Guardian Wednesday about his 2004 divorce from Uma Thurman -- and the vulnerable period that followed.
Hawke's seven year marriage to Thurman ended amid rumors of his affair with the couple's then-nanny Ryan Shawhughes, whom he later married. The actor described the period between his two marriages as "the black years" of his life.
"It was difficult in ways I couldn't even see at the time. 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," he said. "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."
"Nothing teaches you like getting leveled," he continued. "And I got leveled in my early 30s. Nothing went exactly the way I thought it would. Wait a second: love isn't real and, holy shit, I put all this energy into not making the same mistake my parents did and I just re-enacted them all! I thought I was so much smarter than everybody. And I'm not."
Hawke told he told Details magazine in 2004 that the difficult split caused him to lose 15 pounds.
Thurman filed for divorce in 2004, six years after their May 1998 nuptials. The pair have two children together, 13-year-old Maya and 10-year-old son Levon.
In July 2008, the actor married Shawhughes, with whom he has two children: Clementine, 3, and six-month-old Indiana.
Hawke stars as a newly divorced man seeking child custody in his latest film, "The Woman in the Fifth." Watch the trailer here: