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.