After 'melancholic' teen years, 'Inside Out 2' star Maya Hawke embraces her anxiety

Maya Hawke was too cool for Pixar.

The actress was on the verge of turning 17 in 2015 when “Inside Out” was released and at the age where she'd turn her nose up at seeing an animated Disney film in a theater. “You could not pay me to return to my teen years, where I was like, ‘Ugh, I don't watch kids' movies and I don't want to go to these parks,’ ” Hawke says.

Once she eventually watched "Inside Out" at home, “it was an important moment because now I don't feel too old for anything,” she adds. “Now I'm like, ‘I want to do all of that.’ Give me the joy, bring me the childhood, bring me the love.” (Her current nostalgic go-to's include “Scooby-Doo” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender” “for the 100th time.")

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With her heart reopened to “having empathy for my childhood self,” Hawke stars in the new sequel “Inside Out 2” (in theaters now) as Anxiety, a nervy and somewhat antagonistic emotion who arrives in teenage Riley’s mind, displaces Joy (Amy Poehler) and has her own strong opinions about how things should be run.

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The daughter of actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman is a rising star herself: Maya Hawke is filming the final season of the Netflix series “Stranger Things” in the "life-changing" role of ice cream-slinging, monster-beating Robin Buckley. "I've learned so much about myself from playing her and put so much of myself into her," says Hawke, who recently played Flannery O’Connor in the biopic “Wildcat,” directed by her dad.

The 25-year-old chats with USA TODAY about “Inside Out,” her famous parents and what she’s taking on tour when she hits the road for her new folk-pop album “Chaos Angel.”

Question: Your character Anxiety looks like anxiety personified. Did they show her to you early on?

Answer: Totally, it was super-helpful. In my own life, I have some anxiety. It's not debilitating but like a normal amount. I created a little character for myself when I'm kind of in that zone, so I better can express to the people around me that I know that I'm being silly, too: "I'm just a little nervous and like, OK, so we've got to get to the airport two hours early. Is that OK, please?" I just used her in my audition and it worked. 

Think back to when you were Riley’s age, just turned 13. What emotions were driving the Maya Protection System?

Anxiety and sadness − I really had a bad case of the blues in my puberty years. I was a pretty melancholic kid. It's funny to me because now I experience sadness a lot but I wouldn't say it's driving. 

Your new album is full of personal tunes. Is writing songs, or just writing in general, the best way for you to deal with anxiety?

I think so. There's this amazing relief thing that happens. If you're in a really horrible place or time, and you find a way to do something creative with it, you go from this desperation and loneliness and sadness into a little bit of victory and accomplishment and self-worth.

A verse in the song “Missing Out” starts with “I was born with my foot in the door” and you've been honest talking about being the child of celebrities. Were you ever self-conscious about who your parents were?

I was always self-conscious about it as a teenager. Like one time, people plastered my locker with pictures of my parents. There were some weird moments of it. I also grew up in New York where that was really normal. Then in my work, I really have only become self-conscious about it in the last couple of years. But for the most part, having the kind of exposure that I had to the arts as a kid, having parents that enabled me to do that and brought me into those environments, I just am so grateful for that.

You probably have some idea of what awaits you in the business, seeing what they have gone through.

I don't think you ever know what to expect. I never in a million years assumed that I would have the kind of success that they had. I don't even know if it's possible anymore, the way the industry has changed. What I think they consider their success to be, and what I consider mine, is not about what you achieve in your career. It's really, are you going to sustain the opportunity to get to make art? It's a beautiful thing that right now I'm getting those kinds of opportunities.

You’ve been on movie sets and TV show sets. How does being on a music tour compare?

When I first started, I really didn't like it. My nerves were out of control. I couldn't handle it because when you're acting, there's all these guardrails against your nerves. You're not being yourself, you have a script, you have a lot of rehearsal time. Playing shows, it's like maybe a week of rehearsal, max. You're thrown out there and you have to sing and be yourself and speak spontaneously. I found it utterly terrifying.

It's become less nerve-wracking and more and more joyful. I still feel like I'm really just at the beginning.

Do you take anything on the road that you maybe wouldn't use on a movie set?

A vocal nebulizer. I have vocal nodules and I never got surgery on them because I like the quality of my voice. But if I get anxious or stressed or if I overuse my voice, I can get really husky.

So I bring cough drops and my vocal nebulizer and singing straws for my warm-ups and all kinds of little tricks of the trade, whether or not they do anything or if they just make me feel like I have some sense of control.