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Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29,
1970) is an Academy Award-nominated American actress. She performs
predominantly in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from
romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action thrillers. She
is best known for her films directed by Quentin Tarantino. Her most
popular films include Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Pulp Fiction (1994),
Gattaca (1997) and the two Kill Bill movies (2003–04).
She is currently the "face" of Virgin Media in the United Kingdom and
along with Scarlett Johansson, models handbags and other fashion items for
clothes designer Louis Vuitton.
Thurman's mother, Nena Birgitte Caroline von Schlebrügge (b. 1941), was a
fashion model who was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to German nobleman
Friedrich Karl Johannes von Schlebrügge and Birgit Holmquist, who was from
Trelleborg, Sweden. Birgit Holmquist, Thurman's grandmother, had stood
model in 1930 for the statue of a nude woman that still stands overlooking
the harbor of Smygehuk. Thurman's father, Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman,
was born in New York City to Elizabeth Dean Farrar, a stage actress, and
Beverly Reid Thurman, Jr., an Associated Press editor and U.N. translator.
Thurman's mother was briefly married in 1964 to LSD guru Timothy Leary
after the two were introduced by Salvador Dalí; she married Thurman's
father in 1967.
Thurman's father, who would later become a recognized scholar and
professor at Columbia University of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies, was the
first westerner to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. He gave his
children a Buddhist upbringing: Uma is named after an Uma Chenpo (in
Tibetan; Mahamadhyamaka in Sanskrit, meaning “Great Middle Way”). She has
three brothers, Ganden (b. 1971), Dechen (b. 1973) and Mipam (b. 1978),
and a half-sister named Taya (b. 1960) from her father's previous
marriage. She and her siblings spent extended amounts of time in Almora,
India as children, and the Dalai Lama would sometimes visit their home.
Since Professor Thurman moved between various universities, the family
often relocated when Uma was a child. She grew up mostly in Amherst,
Massachusetts and Woodstock, New York. Thurman is described as having been
an awkward and introverted young girl who was frequently teased as a child
for her tall frame, unique angular bone structure, unusual name (sometimes
using the name “Uma Karen” instead of her birth-name), and size 11 feet
(Thurman's famously large feet would later be lovingly filmed by Quentin
Tarantino in the films he made with her). Even friends made a point of
highlighting her unusual features — when she was ten years old, a friend's
mother suggested she receive a nose job.
Although these unique physical attributes would later make her beauty
iconic, these childhood attentions may have led to her bouts with body
dysmorphic disorder, a syndrome involving a disturbed body image, which
she discussed in an interview with Talk magazine in 2001.
Thurman attended Northfield Mount Hermon, a college preparatory boarding
school in Northfield, Massachusetts, where she received her first acting
experiences in school plays. She was unathletic and earned average grades
in school, but excelled in acting from a young age. It was after
performing as Abigail in a production of The Crucible that she was noticed
by talent scouts, and was persuaded to act professionally. Thurman left
her high school to pursue an acting career in New York City and to attend
the Professional Children's School where she dropped out before
graduating.
Thurman began her career as a fashion model at the age of 15. She signed
with the agency Click Models. Uma followed in the footsteps of her mother,
who was also a fashion model. Standing six feet tall with a naturally
lanky frame, Thurman was an immediate success, and her modeling credits
included Glamour Magazine. In 1989, she appeared on the cover of Rolling
Stone magazine, for the annual “Hot issue”.
Thurman made her movie debut in 1988, appearing in a total of four films
that year. Her first two were the high school comedy Johnny Be Good and
the teen thriller Kiss Daddy Goodnight at the age of seventeen, but both
films were only marginally successful and failed to gain her notice.
Thurman’s next role was in the film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,
playing the goddess Venus alongside Oliver Reed’s Vulcan. During her
entrance Thurman briefly appears nude in a homage to Botticelli’s painting
The Birth of Venus. With a budget of $46 million USD and box office
receipts of only $8 million, the film was a commercial failure, although
is now considered to be an artistic triumph and has gained an enthusiastic
cult following.
Her fourth role, as Cecile de Volanges in Dangerous Liaisons, was her
breakthrough role, which brought Thurman to the attention of the film
industry and the general public. Actresses Glenn Close and Michelle
Pfeiffer earned Oscar nominations for their performances, and Thurman drew
an inordinate amount of attention for a topless scene in which she
appeared. Garnering the lion’s share of attention proved too much for the
shy, insecure 19-year-old who thought she was funny-looking, and she fled
to London for almost a year, during which she wore only loose, baggy
clothing.
Soon after the release of Dangerous Liaisons, magazines and other media
outlets were eager to profile the actress. Thurman received praise for her
professionalism from her co-star John Malkovich, who said of her, “There
is nothing twitchy teenager-ish about her, I haven’t met anyone like her
at that age. Her intelligence and poise stand out. But there’s something
else. She’s more than a little haunted”.
In 1990, the 19-year-old Thurman co-starred with Fred Ward in the sexually
provocative drama film Henry & June, the first film to receive an NC-17
rating. Because of the film’s restrictive rating, it never played in a
wide release but would attract more attention to Thurman’s career. Critics
embraced her in her first leading role, The New York Times wrote,
“Thurman, as the Brooklyn-accented June, takes a larger-than-life
character and makes her even bigger, though the performance is often as
curious as it is commanding”.
Thurman’s first starring role in a major production was 1993’s Even
Cowgirls Get the Blues (directed by Gus Van Sant), although the film was a
misstep for her being a critical and financial disappointment (Thurman was
even nominated for a Worst Actress Razzie). The Washington Post described
her acting as shallow, writing that, “Thurman’s strangely passive
characterization doesn’t go much deeper than drawling and flexing her
prosthetic thumbs”. Thurman also starred opposite Robert De Niro in the
crime drama Mad Dog and Glory, another box office disappointment. Later
that year, she auditioned for Stanley Kubrick while he was casting a movie
to be called Wartime Lies, which was never produced. She described working
with him as a “really bad experience”.
After Mad Dog and Glory, Thurman auditioned for Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp
Fiction. Tarantino originally had no intention of casting her, after
seeing her performance in Glory, but ultimately decided to cast her after
having dinner with her: “And Uma and I were doing that scene. We were
living the movie, all right? I left thinking… God, she could be Mia!” Pulp
Fiction would become one of the most successful cult hits of all time when
it grossed over $107 million on a budget of only $8 million USD. The
Washington Post wrote that Thurman was “serenely unrecognizable in a black
wig, is marvelous as a zoned-out gangster’s girlfriend”. Thurman was also
nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar the following year.
Entertainment Weekly claimed that, “of the five women nominated in the
Best Supporting Actress category this year, only (Thurman) can claim that
her performance gave the audience fits”. Thurman also became one of
Tarantino’s favorite actors to cast, whom he described in a 2003 issue of
Time: “Thurman’s up there with Garbo and Dietrich in goddess territory”.
Films of varying quality and success followed Pulp Fiction. She starred
opposite Janeane Garofalo in the moderately successful 1996 romantic
comedy The Truth About Cats & Dogs as a ditzy blonde supermodel. In 1998,
she starred opposite her future husband Ethan Hawke in the dystopian
science fiction film Gattaca. Although Gattaca was not a major success at
the box office, it drew many positive reviews and became successful on the
home video market. Some critics were not as impressed with Thurman, such
as the Los Angeles Times which stated she was “as emotionally uninvolved
as ever”.
The two biggest film flops of Thurman’s career came in 1997 and 1998. She
played Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin, the fourth film of the popular
franchise. Batman & Robin became one of the largest critical flops in
history. Thurman’s performance in the campy film received mainly mixed
reviews, and critics made comparisons between her and actress Mae West.
The New York Times wrote, “like Mae West, she mixes true femininity with
the winking womanliness of a drag queen”. A similar comparison was made by
the Houston Chronicle: “Thurman, to arrive at a ’40s femme fatale,
sometimes seems to be doing Mae West by way of Jessica Rabbit”. The next
year brought The Avengers, another major financial and critical flop. CNN
described Thurman as, “so distanced you feel like you’re watching her
through the wrong end of a telescope”. She received Razzie Award
nominations for both films. She closed out 1998 with the powerful tale Les
Misérables, a film version of Victor Hugo’s classic novel of the same
name, directed by Bille August, in which she played the role of Fantine.
After the birth of her first baby in 1998, Thurman took a rest from major
roles to concentrate on motherhood. Her next roles were in low-budget and
television films, including Tape, Vatel, and Hysterical Blindness. In 2000
she narrated a theatrical work by composer John Moran titled, "Book of the
Dead (2nd Avenue)" at The Public Theater. She won a Golden Globe award for
Hysterical Blindness, a film for which she also served as executive
producer. In the film she played an excitable New Jersey woman in the
1980s searching for romance. The San Francisco Chronicle review wrote,
“Thurman so commits herself to the role, eyes blazing and body akimbo,
that you start to believe that such a creature could exist — an exquisite
looking woman so spastic and needy that she repulses regular Joes. Thurman
has bent the role to her will”.
After a five-year hiatus from any major film roles, Thurman returned in
2003 in John Woo's film Paycheck, followed by her next collaboration with
Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill. Paycheck was only moderately successful with
critics and at the box office, but Kill Bill relaunched her career.
In Kill Bill she played one of the world's top assassins, out on a revenge
quest against her former lover. She was offered the role on her 30th
birthday from Tarantino, who wrote the part specifically for her. He also
cited Thurman as his muse while writing the film, and also gave her a
formal joint credit for the character of Beatrix Kiddo, whom the two
conceived on the set of Pulp Fiction from the sole image of a bride
covered in blood. Production was delayed for several months after Thurman
became pregnant as Tarantino refused to recast the part. The film
reportedly took nine months to shoot, and was filmed on location in five
different countries. The role was also her most demanding to date, and she
spent three months training in martial arts, swordsmanship, and Japanese.
The two-part action epic became an instant cult classic and scored highly
with critics. The film series earned Thurman Golden Globe nominations for
both entries, and three MTV Movie Awards for Best Female Performance and
twice for Best Fight. Rolling Stone likened Thurman to “an avenging angel
out of a 1940s Hollywood melodrama”. In the same article, she was quoted
as saying the training was so difficult, and the harm done to her
character before she recovers and sets out on her vengeance quest was so
vicious, "It should have been called Kill Uma!"
The main inspirations for “The Bride” were several B-movie action
heroines. Thurman's main inspiration for the role was the title character
of Coffy (played by Pam Grier) and the character of Gloria Swenson from
Gloria (played by Gena Rowlands). She said that the two characters are
“two of the only women I've ever seen be truly women holding a weapon”.
Coffy was screened for Thurman by Tarantino prior to beginning production
on the film, to help her model the character.
By 2005, Thurman had become one of Hollywood's highest paid actresses,
commanding a salary of $12.5 million USD per film. Her first film of the
year was Be Cool, the sequel to 1995's Get Shorty, which reunited her with
her Pulp Fiction castmate John Travolta. In the film she played the widow
of a deceased music business executive. The film received poor reviews,
and came in below expectations at the box office. Later in 2005 she
starred in the film Prime with Meryl Streep, playing a woman in her late
thirties romancing a man in his early twenties. Thurman's last film of the
year was a remake of The Producers in which she played Ulla, a Swedish
stage actress hoping to win a part in a new Broadway musical. Originally,
the producers of the film planned to have another singer dub in Thurman's
musical numbers, but she was eager to do her own vocals, however it has
not been confirmed if she performs all of the vocals in the film. She is
credited for her songs in the credits. The film was widely considered a
bomb at the box office, but many praised Thurman's efforts, including A.
O. Scott of the New York Times who said: "Uma Thurman as a would-be
actress is the one bit of genuine radiance in this aggressively and
pointlessly shiny, noisy spectacle."
With a successful film career, Thurman once again became a desired model.
Cosmetics company Lancôme selected her as their spokeswoman, and named
several shades of lipstick after her (these were only sold in Asia). In
2005, she became a spokeswoman for the French fashion house Louis Vuitton.
On February 7, 2006, Thurman was named a knight of the Ordre des Arts et
des Lettres of France for outstanding achievement in the field of art and
literature.
In May 2006 Thurman bought the film rights to the Frank Schätzing novel
"The Swarm", which is now in development and due for release in 2008.
In July 2006 Thurman starred opposite of Luke Wilson in My Super
Ex-Girlfriend. Thurman starred as a super-heroine named "G-Girl" who is
dumped by her boyfriend and then takes her revenge upon him. Thurman
received a reported 14 million dollars for the role, but the film flopped.
Once again Thurman was well-received, yet the film itself was not.
Bollywood director Vishal Bharadwaj has announced his interest in Thurman
to star in his latest film venture opposite Hrithik Roshan, in a
biographical film of the life of actress Nadira. The film is still in its
pre-production stage.
While living in London to avoid the Dangerous Liaisons hype, she began
dating director Phil Joanou, who had just produced U2’s movie Rattle and
Hum in 1988. While visiting the set of his latest project, State Of Grace,
she met English actor Gary Oldman. The two hit it off immediately and were
married in 1990, but the marriage only lasted two years, reportedly caused
by the little time they spent together due to their busy acting schedules.
On May 1, 1998, she married actor Ethan Hawke, after the two met at the
set of Gattaca; he subsequently dedicated his novel ("To Karuna"), to her.
Prior to their engagement, Hawke had proposed twice before she accepted.
Thurman herself acknowledged that they married early on because she had
become pregnant; at the time of their wedding she was seven months along.
The couple have two children, daughter Maya Ray (b. July 8, 1998) and son
Levon Roan (b. January 15, 2002).
In 2003, Thurman and Hawke separated, and in 2004 they filed for divorce.
Many news outlets reported that the cause of the divorce was because Hawke
had cheated on Thurman with Canadian model Jen Perzow. Hawke denied that
the cause of the divorce was infidelity, saying that it was caused by
their busy work schedules. In a 2004 Rolling Stone cover story, Thurman
and Quentin Tarantino denied ever having a romantic relationship, despite
Tarantino once having told a reporter, “I’m not saying that we haven’t,
and I’m not saying that we have”. When asked on The Oprah Winfrey Show if
there was “betrayal of some kind” during the marriage, Thurman said,
“There was some stuff like that at the end. We were having a difficult
time, and you know how the axe comes down and how people behave and how
people express their unhappiness”.
She currently resides in Hyde Park, New York. In 2004, she began dating
New York hotelier Andre Balazs. At one point, they lived in a loft
apartment in New York City's SoHo neighborhood, down the street from
Balazs’s Mercer Hotel. Thurman also owns a townhouse in the New York
neighborhood of Greenwich Village. In March 2006, Thurman’s publicist
announced that the couple had split. However, they continued dating
on-and-off afterwards but split finally in March 2007.
In October 2007, Thurman was said to be engaged to Arpad Busson,
supermodel Elle Macpherson's former partner, who she had been dating since
summer 2007. However, contrary to these reports, Thurman's rep has
asserted that Thurman and Busson are not engaged and currently have no
marriage plans.
Thurman dedicates herself to a variety of political and social causes and
interests. She is a supporter of the United States Democratic Party, and
has made donations to the campaigns of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and
Joseph Driscoll. She is a strong supporter of gun control laws, and in
2000, she participated in Marie Claire’s “End Gun Violence Now” campaign.
She also participated in Planned Parenthood’s “March for Women’s Lives” to
support the legality of abortion. Thurman is also a board member of the
New York- and Boston-based organization Room to Grow, a charitable
organization providing aid to families and children born into poverty. She
currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Tibet House.
In 2007, Thurman hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo together
with actor Kevin Spacey. |
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"Tall, sandy blonde, with sort
of blue eyes, skinny in places, fat in others. An average gal." -
Uma Thurman, self description
"I'm very happy at home. I love to just hang out with my daughter, I
love to work in my garden. I'm not a gaping hole of need."
"It is better to have a relationship with someone who cheats on you
than with someone who does not flush the toilet."
"I was not particularly bright, I wasn't very athletic, I was a
little too tall, odd, funny looking, I was just really weird as a
kid."
"Desperation is the perfume of the young actor. It's so satisfying
to have gotten rid of it. If you keep smelling it, it can drive you
crazy. In this business a lot of people go nuts, go eccentric, even
end up dead from it. Not my plan."
"My washing machine overwhelms me with its options and its
sophistication."
"Everyone looked the same, everyone had it down to such a perfect T.
You get bored. That's when you have to say, 'I will be
worst-dressed.'", on her questionable choice of Oscar attire this
year (2004)
"I had to go to a mirror and look at it. I couldn't picture myself
in my own head. I had no image beyond a stick figure. I wasn't a
mean person as a kid, or dumb, and something has to be said to
justify excluding you."
"Before I had my child, I thought I knew all the boundaries of
myself, that I understood the limits of my heart. It's extraordinary
to have all those limits thrown out, to realize your love is
inexhaustible."
I think we all exude essential truths about ourselves, and then, as
an actress, there's what you do with it. There's your wit and your
imagination, and what you can cook up from your experience and
understanding of what makes a human being tick.
In show business, to pry open doors in new areas is really tough.
Until you have a successful comedy, people don't think you could be
funny, which is what makes a director like Quentin Tarantino so
special. He sees beyond the things on the resume that you've done to
date and opens up wonderful cans of worms for you to crawl into.
That's a cool thing.
Having children flips the game from being about you to being about
what you can create in a home and what your responsibilities are.
I've thought about quitting, but I love what I do so much - it's the
big conundrum of my life.... So I'm fighting to keep my foot in the
business, be creative and stimulated, and still take care of my
children.
I've known some great rock chicks, and it seems to me they're
allowed to have a lot more edge than movie people, where everybody's
got the latest youth serums going, the newest exercise and, if that
won't cover it, they'll do something else. There's this sort of
improve-yourself aspect, whereas the music business seems to have
this much more funky attitude, with, like, a slight respect for
damage.
"I've learned that every working mom is a superwoman." |
