Ethan Hawke admits that Maya Hawke’s upbringing wasn’t always easy.

In a conversation on Variety’s Actors on Actors with Euphoria actress Sydney Sweeney, the Before Sunrise star, 55, lamented over the challenges that his daughter, Maya, faced early on in her life.

“There were a lot of things about her childhood that were really, really hard and complicated, and things I regret for her,” he shared.

Ethan, who welcomed Maya, 27, and son Levon, 23, with ex-wife Uma Thurman, before their divorce in 2005, did not elaborate on those complications. Though, the actor alluded to the difficulties of growing up in the public eye and the toll that took on his eldest child in a previous interview.

“She’s been through a lot in her life. … it’s not easy growing up with parents with paparazzi following them around,” Ethan said in an interview published in the Los Angeles Times in 2022. “It’s not exactly the ride that some people might think it is.”

However, the Training Day actor shared during Actors on Actors that his daughter found her passion in the arts and following in her parent’s footsteps into acting was “without complication.”

“I knew when she was about 4 that she was gonna be an artist,” he told Sweeney. “And I knew that she was gonna be a very good one. That was her safe place, watercoloring, dancing, singing all throughout her childhood.”

The proud dad, who also shares daughters Clementine, 17, and Indiana, 14, with his current wife, Ryan Shawhughes Hawke, also noted that “anything that had to do with human communication was something” Maya “vibrated to.”

“I remember some teacher said, ‘Maya, are you happy?’ ’Cause they were worried about her.’ And she said something to the effect of, ‘Do you really think that’s the question?’ I thought, ‘I love this kid.’ She was about 13,” he recalled.

“‘I don’t think that’s a very interesting question. I think there’s a lot more interesting questions than whether I’m happy or not. Am I happy? No. But I don’t aspire to be happy.’ So, I never worried about her going into the arts, because I knew that was gonna save her life,” he added.

Maya would go on to star in films like Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Do Revenge and The Kill Room, which she worked on with her mother. She also starred in shows like the Little Women mini-series and the hit show, Stranger Things.

She also worked with her father in the 2020 series The Good Lord Bird. While chatting with PEOPLE in 2021, she shared some insight into her father-daughter bond with Ethan, saying, “We’re always working together in one way or another.”

“Whether it’s me calling him being like, ‘How do I do this? I need help.’ Or him helping me with audition tapes. There’s a real network of communication there. I really see him as my teacher more than almost anything else,” she explained.