Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970) is an American actress and model. She has performed in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action movies. She received an Academy Award nomination for the Quentin Tarantino film ''Pulp Fiction'' (1994) and she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in ''Hysterical Blindness'' (2002).
Thurman was born in Boston to
Nena von Schlebrügge and
Robert Thurman, and grew up mostly in
Amherst, Massachusetts, where she went to Amherst Regional Middle School, and then moved to
Woodstock, New York. Her father gave his children a
Buddhist upbringing, and she is named after an Dbuma Chenpo (in
Tibetan, the "db" is silent; from ''Mahamadhyamaka'' in
Sanskrit, meaning "Great
Middle Way"). Regarding religion, she now calls herself agnostic. She has three brothers, Ganden (b. 1968), 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 time in
Almora,
Uttarakhand, India, during childhood, and the
Dalai Lama sometimes visited their home. She is described as having been an awkward and introverted girl who was teased for her tall frame, angular bone structure, enormous feet and unusual name (sometimes using the name “Uma Karen” instead of her birth name). When she was 10 years old, a friend's mother suggested a
nose job. As a child, she suffered bouts of
body dysmorphic disorder, which she discussed in an interview with ''Talk'' magazine in 2001. She attended Amherst Public Schools. In the 8th grade she discovered her love for acting. Talent scouts noticed her performance as Abigail in a production of ''
The Crucible'', and offered her the chance to act professionally. Thurman attended
Northfield Mount Hermon School, an elite preparatory school in Massachusetts, before dropping out to pursue a career in acting.
Thurman's father,
Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman (b. August 3, 1941), was born in New York City, to Elizabeth Dean (Farrar), a stage actress, and Beverly Reid Thurman, Jr., an Associated Press editor and United Nations translator. Robert Thurman was professor of religion at Amherst College from 1973 to 1988, when he accepted a position at Columbia University, where he was a professor of
Tibetan Buddhism.
Uma Thurman's mother, Nena von Schlebrügge, was a model born in Mexico City in 1941. Thurman's maternal grandfather was Colonel Baron Friedrich Karl Johannes von Schlebrügge, a German military officer who had become one of the senior Nazi spies in the Americas but who was also jailed by the Nazis for protecting Jewish friends. Thurman's maternal grandmother was Swedish-born Birgit Holmquist, from Trelleborg, who in 1930 modelled for a nude statue that overlooks the harbor of Smygehuk, Sweden (Birgit's father was Swedish and her mother was of German and Danish descent). Thurman's mother was introduced to LSD guru Timothy Leary by Salvador Dalí and became Leary's third wife in 1964. She wed Thurman's father in 1967.
Thurman began her career as a fashion model at age 15, and signed with the agency Click Models. Her modeling credits included ''
Glamour'', the December 1985 supplement cover of ''
Vogue'' and the May 1985 cover of British Vogue when she was only 15 years old. She made her movie debut in 1988, appearing in four films that year. Her first two were the high school comedy ''
Johnny Be Good'' and the teen thriller ''Kiss Daddy Goodnight.'' She appeared in ''
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen'', playing the goddess Venus alongside
Oliver Reed's Vulcan; during her entrance she briefly appears nude in a homage to
Botticelli's ''
The Birth of Venus''. With a budget of $46 million and box office receipts of only $8 million, the film was a commercial failure. Her breakthrough came in her role as Cecile de Volanges in ''
Dangerous Liaisons''. At the time, she was insecure about her appearance, and fled to London for almost a year, during which she wore only loose, baggy clothing. She was praised by 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, Thurman co-starred with
Fred Ward in the sexually provocative drama ''
Henry & June'', the first film to receive an
NC-17 rating. Because of the rating, it never played in a wide release but critics embraced her. ''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”. Her first starring role in a major production was
Gus Van Sant's
1993 adaptation of
Tom Robbins' ''
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues''. It was a critical and financial disappointment; Thurman was 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". She also starred opposite
Robert De Niro in the 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. Her agent said she described working with him as a "really bad experience."
After ''Mad Dog and Glory'', Thurman auditioned for
Quentin Tarantino's ''
Pulp Fiction'', which grossed over $107 million on a budget of only $8 million. The ''Washington Post'' wrote that Thurman was "serenely unrecognizable in a black wig, [and] is marvelous as a zoned-out gangster's girlfriend." Thurman was nominated for the
Best Supporting Actress Oscar the following year. She became one of Tarantino's favorite actresses to cast; he told ''Time'' magazine in 2003 that she was "up there with
Garbo and
Dietrich in goddess territory."
1996 would see Thurman in two moderately successful films, the first of which was ''Beautiful Girls'', where she played the female lead and love interest of Timothy Hutton and was supported with a high-profile cast (for that time) of Mira Sorvino, Martha Plimpton, and Natalie Portman. The film was well received by the critics for the script and acting, particularly that of Hutton and Portman. It performed moderately well at the box office. Thurman also starred opposite Janeane Garofalo in the moderately successful 1996 romantic comedy ''The Truth About Cats & Dogs'' as a ditzy blonde model. In 1997, she starred opposite her future husband Ethan Hawke in the science fiction film ''Gattaca''. Although ''Gattaca'' was not a 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 wrote that she was "as emotionally uninvolved as ever." Her next role was Poison Ivy in ''Batman & Robin'', the fourth of the series. Her performance received mixed reviews, and critics compared her to 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 her 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 ''Les Misérables'', a film version of Victor Hugo's novel of the same name, directed by Bille August, in which she played 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''. She also starred in ''
Chelsea Walls'', a movie directed by then-husband Ethan Hawke. 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 a New Jersey woman in the 1980s searching for romance. The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' review said, "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 pause, Thurman returned in 2003 in
John Woo's film ''
Paycheck'', which was only moderately successful with critics and at the box office. Her next film was Tarantino's ''
Kill Bill'', which relaunched her career. In ''Kill Bill'' she played assassin
Beatrix Kiddo, out for revenge against her former lover. Tarantino wrote the part specifically for her. He cited Thurman as his
muse while writing the film, and gave her joint credit for the character, 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 took nine months to shoot, and was filmed in five different countries. The role was also her most demanding, 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 her to "an avenging angel out of a 1940s Hollywood melodrama".
The 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 [while] 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 was commanding a salary of $12.5 million 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. In 2005, she starred in ''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. She is credited for her songs in the credits. The film was 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, though they were sold only in Asia. In 2005, she became a spokeswoman for the French fashion house Louis Vuitton. On February 7, 2006, she 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, she bought the film rights to the Frank Schätzing novel ''The Swarm'', which is in development and due for release in 2015. When the film remake ''The Women'' was in pre-production in 2006, Thurman was cast as Crystal Allen, alongside Annette Bening, Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock, Ashley Judd, Lisa Kudrow and Anne Hathaway, being directed by James L. Brooks, but the director was changed and Thurman was no longer part of the cast. In July 2006, she starred opposite Luke Wilson in ''My Super Ex-Girlfriend''. Thurman portrayed a super-heroine named "G-Girl" who is dumped by her boyfriend and then takes her revenge upon him. She received a reported $14 million for the role, but the film flopped. Once again she was well-received, but the film was not.
In February 2008, she starred opposite Colin Firth and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in ''The Accidental Husband'', a romantic comedy about a woman who finds herself married while engaged to another man. It seems like archetypal Hollywood contrivance, but according to Thurman, a similar situation happened in New York. Also in 2008, she starred as Elsa in the British film ''My Zinc Bed'', in which she plays a cocaine addict, starring opposite Paddy Considine and Jonathan Pryce. In 2010, her movie ''Motherhood'', set a record for the biggest bomb in British cinema history garnering just £88 on 11 tickets on its opening weekend. In the United States it earned just $93,388 in three weeks of release.
Thurman will star in the film version of the 1950s books ''Eloise In Paris'', playing the role of Nanny, to be directed by Charles Shyer. In 2011, Thurman was a member of the jury for the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival. In December 2011, James Hibberd of ''Entertainment Weekly'' reported Thurman had joined the cast of NBC's ''Smash'' as Rebecca Duvall. Thurman will appear in five episodes of the drama series.
Thurman met English actor
Gary Oldman on the set of ''
State of Grace'', and they were married in 1990, but it ended two years later.
On May 1, 1998, she married actor Ethan Hawke, whom she met on the set of ''Gattaca''. Hawke's novel ''Ash Wednesday'' is dedicated to "Karuna", Thurman's middle name. She acknowledged that they had married because she was pregnant – seven months at their wedding. The marriage produced two children, daughter Maya Thurman Hawke (born July 8, 1998) and son Levon Green Hawke (born January 15, 2002). The couple separated in 2003. When asked on ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' whether the break-up involved betrayal, she 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." In a 2004 ''Rolling Stone'' cover story, Thurman and director Quentin Tarantino denied having had 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."
She was engaged to London-based financier Arpad Busson, whom she began dating in 2007, but the relationship ended in November 2009. In 2011, the couple were back together at the Louis Vuitton spring/summer fashion show in Paris. In February 2012, it was announced that Thurman and Busson are expecting their first child together.
Thurman supports the
United States Democratic Party, and has given money to the campaigns of
John Kerry,
Hillary Clinton, and
Joseph R. Driscoll. She supports
gun control laws, and in 2000, she participated in ''
Marie Claire''’s “End Gun Violence Now” campaign. She is a member of the board of Room to Grow, a charitable organization providing aid to families and children born into poverty. She serves on the board of the
Tibet House. In 2007, she hosted the
Nobel Peace Prize Concert in
Oslo, Norway with actor
Kevin Spacey.
In 2011, Thurman became one of a handful of celebrity faces attached to USAID and Ad Council's FWD campaign, an awareness push to combat the famine, war, and drought in the Horn of Africa.
Bina, Roxanna. "Interview with Uma Thurman." ''Independent Film Quarterly''. December 8, 2003, accessed January 5, 2006.
Biography ''Uma Thurman biography'', accessed January 5, 2006.
Brett, Anwar. ''Uma Thurman interview — Kill Bill Vol. 2''. April 2004, accessed January 5, 2006.
Chavel, Sean. "Uma Thurman interview." ''UGO''. October 2003, accessed January 6, 2006.
Felperin, Leslie. Uma Thurman: Pulp friction", ''The Independent'', April 16, 2004.
Fischer, Paul. "For Ms. Thurman, Life is More than Just a Paycheck." ''Film Monthly''. September 22, 2003, accessed January 5, 2006.
Hedegaard, Erik. "
A Magnificent Obsession." ''Rolling Stone''. April 29, 2004, accessed January 6, 2005.
Russell, Jamie. ''Uma Thurman interview — Kill Bill Vol. 1''. October 2003, accessed January 5, 2006.
Sutherland, Bryon, Ellis, Lucy. ''Uma Thurman, The Biography". Aurum Press, 2004.
TV.com – Uma Thurman
Category:1970 births
Category:American film actors
Category:American female models
Category:Best Actress Empire Award winners
Category:Best Miniseries or Television Movie Actress Golden Globe winners
Category:American people of Swedish descent
Category:Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute alumni
Category:American people of German descent
Category:People from Amherst, Massachusetts
Category:Actors from Boston, Massachusetts
Category:Saturn Award winners
Category:Massachusetts Democrats
Category:Northfield Mount Hermon School alumni
Category:Living people
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