Look up UMA or uma in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

UMA may refer to:

Abbreviations[link]

• Unified managed account, a type of investment account
• Arab Maghreb Union (Union du Maghreb arabe)
• Ukrainian Museum-Archives, a museum in Cleveland, Ohio
• Unified Memory Architecture, a computer memory architecture that allows the graphics processing unit to share system memory
• Uniform Memory Access, a computer memory architecture used in parallel computers
• University of Madeira, a university in Funchal, Portugal
• University of Maine at Augusta, a campus of the University of Maine
• University of Málaga, a public university situated in Málaga, Spain
• Unlicensed Mobile Access, a technology that provides roaming between GSM and 802.11, based on the 3GPP or Generic Access Network (GAN) standard
• Upper Memory Area, a part of Extended Memory Specification in DOS
• Ursa Major (UMa), a constellation
• Urban Music Awards, a music awards show
• United Mobile Apps, a Mobile / Broadband / Wireless Company in Bangalore, India

People[link]

• Uma (given name)
• Uma Thurman (actress)

Places[link]

• Uma District, Ehime, a district in Ehime prefecture, Japan
• University of Málaga, a university in Spain

Other[link]

• Uma (game), a wrestling game popular among the indigenous residents of Hawaii
• Uma (goddess), in Hinduism, an alternate name of the goddess Parvati
• Uma longhouse, the traditional communal house of the Mentawai people off western Sumatra
• Uma (Gajo house), the traditional vernacular house of the Gajo district in Sumatra
• Uma (Oobi), one of the main characters of Oobi
• UMA Engineering Ltd., an engineering firm with offices in Canada
• Uma (English: Horse), a 1941 Japanese film by Kajirō Yamamoto
• Cyclone Uma, a tropical cyclone which damaged Port Vila, Vanuatu, in 1987
• Ms. Uma, a character from Crayon Shin-chan

See also[link]

• Una (disambiguation)
• Hunna, French saint
• Oona, given name
• Oonagh, given name
• Ooma, telecommunications device

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Uma Ragini Bharti (born May 3, 1959), is an Indian politician. She was born in Tikamgarh District, Madhya Pradesh and from a very young age, started holding discourses on Indian Epics.Her father was an atheist. Raised under the care of the late Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia of Gwalior, Uma Bharati, along with Sadhvi Ritambhara, played a prominent part in the Ayodhya Ram Janmabhoomi Movement. Her signature slogan during the movement was "Dear Ram we will come, and build temple at the place".

At a young age, she became involved with the Bharatiya Janata Party. She contested her first Parliamentary elections in 1984, but lost. In 1989, she successfully contested the Khajurao seat, and retained it in elections conducted in 1991, 1996 and 1998. In 1999, she switched over and won the Bhopal seat. In the Vajpayee Administration, she held various state-level portfolios of Human Resource Development, Tourism, Youth Affairs & Sports, and finally Coal & Mines.

In the 2003 Assembly polls, Mayank K led the BJP to a three fourths majority in Madhya Pradesh. She defeated her Congress opponent from the Malehra seat with a 25% margin.

Uma Bharati resigned from the post of Chief Minister in August 2004, when an arrest warrant was issued against her regarding the 1994 Hubli riot case.^[1][2]

Political disagreements[link]

In November 2004, Uma Bharti was suspended from the Bharatiya Janata Party because of her criticism of Lal Krishna Advani.^{[citation needed]} The suspension was lifted and in May 2005, she was appointed a member of the party's national executive.^{[citation needed]} Later that year, she was expelled from the party for opposing the appointment of Shivraj Singh Chauhan as the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh.^{[citation needed]} She had the sympathy of various BJP leaders, such as Madan Lal Khurana and Sangh Priya Gautam, but was unable to capitalise on it. She drew large crowds during a Ram Roti Yatra and campaigns at various by-elections, and she established a new Hindu-oriented party called the Bharatiya Janshakti Party but both she and the party were unsuccessful in their efforts to be elected.^{[citation needed]}

A section of the RSS, as well as some within the BJP, attempted to bring her back into the BJP fold but neither she nor opponents such as Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj favoured the sentiment.^{[citation needed]} However, she did agree to withdraw her candidates for the 2007 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections at the request of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad chief, Ashok Singhal.^{[citation needed]}

She was re-inducted in the BJP on 7 June 2011.^{[citation needed]} She was tasked with reviving the party in [Uttar Pradesh, ahead of the assembly polls in 2012.^[3][4]

In the March 2012 assembly elections, Bharti won the Charkhari constituency, in Mahoba District.^{[citation needed]}

Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project[link]

On 25 July 2007, Bharti began a week-days fast protesting over the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project saying that the bridge be saved.^{[citation needed]}

FDI in retail in India[link]

In late November 2011, when the Government of India decided to allow 51% FDI in multi-brand retail and 100% in single brand retail, Uma Bharti threatened Walmart with arson should they enter the Indian market.^[5]

Timeline[link]

v t e Sangh Parivar Organisations Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Rashtra Sevika Samiti Bharatiya Janata Party Vishwa Hindu Parishad Bajrang Dal Muslim Rashtriya Manch Rashtriya Sikh Sangat Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh Hindu Munnani Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh Swadeshi Jagaran Manch Durga Vahini Hindu Students Council Ekal Vidyalaya Seva Bharathi Bharatiya Kisan Sangh Balagokulam Vidya Bharati Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram Hindu Vivek Kendra Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas Major figures K.B. Hedgewar Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Deendayal Upadhyaya Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras Atal Bihari Vajpayee Lal Krishna Advani Rajju Bhaiya Ashok Singhal K.S. Sudarshan Praveen Togadia Mohan Bhagwat Narendra Modi Philosophy Hindu nationalism (Hindu Rashtra) Hindutva Integral humanism Ram Janmabhoomi Undivided India (Akhand Bharat) Uniform civil code

References[link]

External links[link]

• "BJP suspends Uma Bharati" - rediff.com article dated November 10, 2004
• "Uma Bharati in BJP national executive" - rediff.com article dated May 28, 2005
• "India's firebrand Hindu nun" - BBC News article dated November 30, 2005
• BBC article on Uma Bharti's suspension

• Hindu nationalism

Uma Thurman
Uma Thurman in 2011
Born	Uma Karuna Thurman (1970-04-29) April 29, 1970 (age 42) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, model
Years active	1987–present
Spouse	Gary Oldman (1990–1992) Ethan Hawke (1998–2004)
Partner	Arpad Busson
Children	Maya Thurman Hawke (b. 1998) Levon Green Hawke (b.2002)

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).

Early life[link]

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.^[1] 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.^[2] 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.^[2] As a child, she suffered bouts of body dysmorphic disorder, which she discussed in an interview with Talk magazine in 2001.^[3] 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,^[4] 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.^[2][5]

Family background[link]

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.^[6] 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.^[7]

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^[8] but who was also jailed by the Nazis for protecting Jewish friends.^[9] 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).^[10] 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.^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

Early work (1987–1989)[link]

Thurman began her career as a fashion model at age 15,^[11] 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.^[12] 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.^[13] 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.^[12] 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."^[14]

Career prominence (1990–1993)[link]

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”.^[15] 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".^[16] 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."^[17]

1994–1998[link]

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.^[18] The Washington Post wrote that Thurman was "serenely unrecognizable in a black wig, [and] is marvelous as a zoned-out gangster's girlfriend."^[19] 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."^[20]

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.^[21] Some critics were not as impressed with Thurman, such as The Los Angeles Times, which wrote that she was "as emotionally uninvolved as ever."^[22] 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."^[23] 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."^[24] 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."^[25] 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.

Thurman at Cannes, 2000

Hiatus (1998–2002)[link]

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."^[26]

2003–present[link]

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.^[27] 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.^[28] The two-part action epic became an instant cult classic^[29] 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".^[30]

At the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival

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".^[31] Coffy was screened for Thurman by Tarantino prior to beginning production on the film, to help her model the character.^[27]

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.^[32] 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."^[33]

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.^[34] 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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[35] 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.^[36] In the United States it earned just $93,388 in three weeks of release.^[37]

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.^{[citation needed]} In 2011, Thurman was a member of the jury for the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival.^[38] In December 2011, James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly reported Thurman had joined the cast of NBC's Smash as Rebecca Duvall.^[39] Thurman will appear in five episodes of the drama series.^[39]

Personal life[link]

In 2011 at Cannes

Relationships[link]

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.^[40]

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.^[41] She acknowledged that they had married because she was pregnant – seven months at their wedding.^[42] 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.^[43] 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."^[44] 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."^[17]

She was engaged to London-based financier Arpad Busson,^[45] whom she began dating in 2007, but the relationship ended in November 2009.^[46] 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.^[47]

Activism and charity work[link]

Thurman supports the United States Democratic Party, and has given money to the campaigns of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Joseph R. Driscoll.^[48] She supports gun control laws, and in 2000, she participated in Marie Claire’s “End Gun Violence Now” campaign.^[49] She is a member of the board of Room to Grow, a charitable organization providing aid to families and children born into poverty.^[50] She serves on the board of the Tibet House.^[51] In 2007, she hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway with actor Kevin Spacey.^[52]

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.^[53]

Filmography[link]

Awards[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

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Lucy Liu
Lucy Liu at the 2011 Kung Fu Panda 2 premiere
Born	Lucy Liu (1968-12-02) December 2, 1968 (age 43) Queens, New York, United States
Alma mater	University of Michigan (B.A.)
Occupation	Actress, producer, singer
Years active	1989–present
Partner	Will McCormack (2004–present)

Lucy Alexis Liu (Chinese: 劉玉玲; pinyin: Liú Yùlíng; born December 2, 1968) is an American actress, singer and film producer. She became known for playing the role of the vicious and ill-mannered Ling Woo in the television series Ally McBeal (1998–2002), and has also appeared in several Hollywood films including Payback, Charlie's Angels, Chicago, Kill Bill, and Kung Fu Panda. In 2012, Liu joined the cast of the TNT original series Southland.

Personal life[link]

Liu was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. In high school, she adopted her middle name "Alexis".^[1] She is the youngest of three children born to Cecilia, who worked as a biochemist, and Tom Liu, who was a civil engineer.^[2] Both of Liu's parents were immigrants from Taiwan of Chinese descent. Her grandparents were born and raised in China.^[3] She has an older brother, John,^[4][5][6][7] and an older sister, Jenny.^[8] Liu has stated that she grew up in a "diverse" neighborhood. She learned to speak Mandarin Chinese at home and began studying English when she was five years old.^[9]