In the celebrity world, if a kid has the same last name as their parents, it's going to be pretty obvious who they are—just ask the Jolie-Pitt brood. But, when a celeb parent has a stage name, that's a different story. Know any famous rock stars with the last name Hewson? You do, but you might not realize it. Twenty-nine-year-old actor Eve Hewson is U2 frontman Bono's daughter (his real name is Paul Hewson), but she's gotten to establish her own career with a lot of fans not even being aware of that fun fact.
Hewson stars in the Netflix psychological thriller series Behind Her Eyes, which was released in February. Now, as she's been making the rounds promoting the show, she's been answering a lot of questions about her famous father and the fact that people don't necessarily know they're related.
Read on to see what Hewson's had to say about maintaining some sense of anonymity even while growing up with Bono as her dad, and to find out more about her career. And for more on children who grew up with famous parents, check out 19 Celebrity Kids on Their First Red Carpet.
Hewson is glad her name isn't recognizable.
The Kelly Clarkson Show/YouTubeDuring a recent appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Kelly Clarkson told Hewson, "I know you from things, but I did not know that your dad was Bono." The host then asked if Hewson finds that separation to be a positive thing.
"It's good," Hewson said. "Nobody knows my last name, so nobody knows who I am, which is actually kind of fun. I'm lucky I'm not a Jagger or a McCartney or something like that." She also said of her dad's name, "His real name is Paul, which is a very un-rock star kind of name."
And while "Eve Hewson" sounds like a pretty normal name, the actor's full name is more of what you might expect of a rock star's daughter: Memphis Eve Sunny Day Iris Hewson. "It's very embarrassing. My parents were hippies. I don't know how to explain this," she told Clarkson. "I really am the poster child for those People magazine celebrity kids, the craziest names, that's who I am."
For another celebrity kid who's breaking out on her own, See Paul Walker's Daughter on the Runway for the First Time.
She's also thankful she didn't grow up in Los Angeles.
Featureflash Photo Agency / Shutterstock.comGiven that Hewson and her siblings are the children of one of the most famous living musicians, their lives could have been a lot different if they lived someplace where they were always surrounded by fame. Instead, they were raised in Ireland, where Bono and wife Ali Hewson are from. Hewson told The Irish Times in a February interview that her mom is a "very private person" and wanted to raise her four children to have as normal an upbringing as possible.
"I'm really lucky I didn’t grow up in London," Hewson said. "I’m really lucky I didn’t grow up in LA. Being in Ireland and just how Irish people don’t care about fame, it’s not our currency at all … I think that really helped." She added that she and her family would go on tour with U2 and have "this extraordinary experience," but then return to their usual life.
"I think that’s helped with acting because you go away, have this magnificent time on a movie set, with people doing things for you like getting you water when you could walk five feet away and get your own water," she continued. "And I’m like 'no, no, no that’s not normal'. It’s not real life."
Bono and Ali were high school sweethearts. Read more about their love story and that of other longtime couples in 13 Celebrities Who Married Their High School Sweethearts.
She did take advantage of her dad's fame for one thing.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon/YouTube"I knew I was in a unique position with my dad being vary famous," Hewson told Jimmy Fallon during a 2014 interview on The Tonight Show. She explained that one day she and her friend went through her dad's contact list on the home computer and pranked called Justin Timberlake. "We asked him general knowledge questions from the back of a cereal box," she said of the prank. "I was 11!"
While she said they tried pranking a lot of people, Timberlake was the one who actually stayed on the line. "I think he didn't hang up because he was getting the answers right."
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Behind Her Eyes isn't her first acting gig by far.
Netflix/YouTubeHewson may be making headlines now for her Netflix show, but she's been acting for years. She appeared in the films Bridge of Spies, Blood Ties, and This Must Be the Place, and on the TV series The Knick. Plus, she studied acting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
In the same interview with The Irish Times, Hewson said that her parents weren't huge on the idea of her being an actor at first. "I wanted to be a real actor, you know like Meryl Streep and go to grad school," she said. "My parents said you can only apply to Tisch and you probably won't get it, so good luck."
She did end up getting in, and her experience auditioning is what make her parents realize how much she cared about acting. After the audition, she came home and vomited all night. She said her parents then understood, "Oh, she must really care about this." Hewson said she felt like she had literally "swallowed my nerves."
For another kid following in their father's footsteps in the entertainment biz, See James Gandolfini's Lookalike Son as Tony in the "Sopranos" Prequel.
