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Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970) is an American model and Academy Award nominated film actress. Thurman began modeling professionally in the late 1980s before moving to acting in 1988, and is best known for her films released in the 1990s and 2000s, specifically those with director Quentin Tarantino.

Early life and education

Thurman was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her half-Swedish, half-German mother Nena von Schlebrugg (b. 8 January 1941) was briefly married to Timothy Leary after the two were introduced by Salvador Dalí before marrying Thurman's father Robert Thurman (b. 4 August 1941), a professor at Columbia University of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies of British ancestry. Thurman and her siblings were given a Buddhist upbringing by her father, and she is named after a Hindu goddess. She has three brothers with equally exotic names: Ganden, Dechen (b. 18 January 1973) and Mipam (b. April 1978). Thurman and her siblings also spent extended amounts of time in India as children, and the Dalai Lama would sometimes visit their home.

Thurman was an awkward and introverted young girl, and was frequently teased as a child for her large six foot frame, her size 11 feet, unique angular bone structure, and unusual name. Although later, Thurman's famously large feet would later be lovingly filmed by Quentin Tarantino in the films he would make with her, to general public amusement. Due to her father frequently teaching at different universities, her family often relocated when she was a child. She was unathletic and earned average grades in school, but excelled in acting at a young age. Her first acting experiences came in elementary school plays. Thurman left her high school, Northfield Mount Hermon, to pursue an acting career in New York City and to attend the Professional Children's School, but dropped out before graduating.

Career

Early works

Thurman began her career as a model at the age of fifteen. The natually lanky framed Thurman was a successful model, and would later be featured in a layout in Glamour magazine. Thurman's mother was also a former model. In 1989, Thurman would appear on the cover of a Rolling Stone magazine, for the magazine's annual "Hot issue".

Thurman made her film debut in 1988 with three films. Her first was the high school comedy Johnny Be Good at the age of seventeen. Thurman's next role would be a small part in the film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. With a budget of $46 million USD and box office receipts of only $8 million, the film was a commercial failure. Her third role as Cecile de Volanges in Dangerous Liaisons was her breakthrough role, which brought Thurman to the attention of the film industry.

Major roles

In 1990, the 19-year-old Thurman starred with Fred Ward in the sexually provocative drama film Henry & June, the first film to receive an NC-17 rating. Due to the film's restrictive rating, it never played in a wide release but would attract more attention to Thurman's career.

Thurman's first starring role in a major production was 1993's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, directed by Gus Van Sant. The film was both a critical and financial disappointment, and Thurman was even nominated for a Worst Actress Razzie for the film. Thurman also starred opposite of Robert DeNiro in the crime drama Mad Dog and Glory, another box office disappointment.

In 1994, Thurman would give her most successful performance to date as Mia Wallace, in a starring role in Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction. The Washington Post wrote that Thurman was "serenely unrecognizable in a black wig, is marvelous as a zoned-out gangster’s girlfriend." Thurman would be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress the following year. Pulp Fiction would also 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.

Thurman followed Pulp Fiction with films of varying quality and success. She starred opposite of Janeane Garofalo in the moderately successful 1996 romantic comedy The Truth About Cats & Dogs, and the 1998 science fiction film Gattaca. Although Gattaca was not a major financial success, both the film and Thurman drew many positive reviews.

Thurman would also perform in two major film flops in 1997 and 1998. Thurman played Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin, the fourth film of the franchise. Batman & Robin was a failure at both the box office and would become one of the largest critical flops in history, but some critics praised Thurman for her enthusiastic performance. The New York Times described Thurman's performance, "like Mae West, she mixes true femininity with the winking womanliness of a drag queen." The next year brought The Avengers, which was also a major financial and critical flop. Thurman also received Razzie award nominations for both films.

Thurman's next roles were in low budget and television films, including Sweet and Lowdown, Tape, Vatel, and Hysterical Blindness. Thurman would later win a Golden Globe award for Hysterical Blindness, a film which she also served as the executive producer. In the film she played a woman in the 1980s searching for a romantic partner.

After a five year hiatus from any major film roles, Thurman returned in 2003 in John Woo's film Paycheck, and her next collaboration with Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill. Paycheck would only be moderately successful with critics and at the box office, but Kill Bill would relaunch her career.

Thurman played Beatrix Kiddo, 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, but production would be delayed for several months after Thurman became pregnant. Thurman's part was almost recast with Rosanna Arquette, but Tarantino decided against recasting. He has 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. The film reportedly took nine months to shoot, and was filmed on location in five different countries. The two-part action epic was a financial success and scored highly with critics, and would earn Thurman Golden Globe nominations for both entries, and three MTV Movie Awards for Best Female Performance and twice for Best Fight. Rolling Stone magazine likened Thurman's performance to "an avenging angel out of a 1940s Hollywood melodrama."

Thurman based the character of "The Bride" on several B-movie action heroines. Her main inspirations for the role were the title character of Coffy (played by Pam Grier) and the character of Gloria Swenson from Gloria (played by Gena Rowlands). Thurman 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 was one of Hollywood's highest paid actresses, commanding a salary of $12.5 million USD per film. Thurman's first film of the year was Be Cool, the sequel to 1995's Get Shorty. Thurman co-starred with her former Pulp Fiction castmate John Travolta in the film, and played the widow of a deceased music business executive. Thurman also starred in the film Prime with Meryl Streep, playing a woman in her late thirties romancing a young 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 actor 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 Thurman performs all of the vocals in the film.

Thurman was also a spokesmodel for the cosmetics company Lancôme. Lancôme also named several lipstick shades after her, but they were only sold in Asia. In 2005, she became a spokesmodel for the French fashion house Louis Vuitton.

Personal life

In 1990 Thurman married actor Gary Oldman, but divorced him two years later. On May 1, 1998, she married actor Ethan Hawke, the two had met at the set of Gattaca. Hawke's book For Karuna was dedicated to her. They have two children, a daughter Maya Ray (b. 8 July 1998) and a son Levon Roan (b. 15 January 2002). In 2003, Thurman and Hawke separated, and in 2004 the couple filed for divorce. She now resides in Hyde Park, New York and has been dating the New York hotelier Andre Balasz. They live together in a loft apartment in Manhattan's fashionable SoHo neighborhood, down the street from Balazs's Mercer Hotel.

Filmography

References

• AEC One Stop Group, Inc Biography Uma Thurman biography. Retrieved 5 January 2006.
• Jamie Russell Interview Uma Thurman interview - Kill Bill Vol. 1. October 2003. Retrieved 5 January 2006.
• Anwar Brett Interview Uma Thurman interview - Kill Bill Vol. 2. April 2004. Retrieved 5 January 2006.
• Josh Tyrangirl Time Magazine The Tao of Uma. Retrieved 5 January 2006.
• Paul Fischer Film Monthly For Ms. Thurman, Life is More than Just a Paycheck. 22 September 2003. Retrieved 5 January 2006.
• Roxanna Bina Independent film quarterly Interview with Uma Thurman. 8 December 2003. Retrieved 5 January 2006.
• Independent Online Uma Thurman: Pulp friction. Retrieved 5 January 2006.
• Tiscali Tiscali Film and TV Uma Thurman biography. Retrieved 5 January 2006.
• Erik Hedegaard Rolling Stone magazine A Magnificent Obsession by Erik Hedegaard. 29 April 2004. Retrieved 6 January 2005.
• Sean Chavel UGO Uma Thurman interview. October 2003. Retrieved 6 January 2006.
• The Real Dick Hollywood Uma Thurman on... FilmJerk.com. Retrieved 1 February 2006.
• IMDb business data
• Rotten Tomatoes Batman & Robin
• Desson Howe. Pulp Fiction review Washington Post. 14 October 1994. Retrieved 7 February 2006.
• Rotten Tomatoes The Avengers
• Crazy for Cinema Gattaca
• IMDb salary
• WENN daily news, 1 April 2005
• Janet Maslin. New York Times review, Batman and Robin. 20 June 1997. Retrieved 7 February 2006.
• Rolling Stone cover archive
• Kill Bill Vol. 1 DVD bonus featurette
• What Made Kill Bill. MTV News. 10 June 2004. Retrieved 7 February 2006.
• Peter Travers. Kill Bill Vol. 2 review. 2004. Retrieved 7 February 2006.
• Jamie Malanowski. Catching up with Uma Thurman. USA Today. 5 October 2003. Retrieved 7 February 2006.

External links

• Uma Thurman at IMDb
• Uma Thurman profile

• 1970 births
• American actors
• Autodidacts
• Batman actors
• Best Supporting Actress Oscar Nominee
• Buddhists
• Film actors
• English Americans
• German-Americans
• People from Massachusetts
• Pro-choice celebrities
• Swedish-Americans
• Worst Actress Razzie nominees
• Worst Supporting Actress Razzie nominees
• Living people