Uma Thurman
Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970) is an American actress. She has performed in a variety of films, from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action films. Following her appearances on the December 1985 and May 1986 covers of British Vogue, Thurman starred in Dangerous Liaisons (1988). She rose to international prominence with her performance as Mia Wallace in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction,[1] for which she was nominated for the Academy Award, the BAFTA Award, the Golden Globe Award, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress. Often hailed as Tarantino's muse,[2] she reunited with the director to play the main role in Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2 (2003, 2004),[3] which brought her two additional Golden Globe Award nominations.[4]
For the song about the actress by Fall Out Boy, see Uma Thurman (song).
Uma Thurman
- Actress
- model
1985–present
Arpad Busson
(2007–2009, 2011–2014)
3, including Maya and Levon Hawke
- Robert Thurman (father)
- Nena von Schlebrügge (mother)
Established as a Hollywood actress,[5] Thurman's other notable films include Henry & June (1990), The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), Batman & Robin (1997), Gattaca (1997), Les Misérables (1998), Paycheck (2003), The Producers (2005), My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac (2013),[6] The House That Jack Built (2018), and Hollywood Stargirl (2022).[7] In 2011, she was a member of the jury for the main competition at the 64th Cannes Film Festival,[8] and in 2017, she was named president of the 70th edition's "Un Certain Regard" jury. Thurman made her Broadway debut in The Parisian Woman (2017–2018).
Thurman won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Film for her performance in the made-for-HBO film Hysterical Blindness (2002) and received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her five-episode role in the NBC musical series Smash (2012).[9] She also starred in the miniseries The Slap (2015) and the series Imposters (2017–2018), Chambers (2019) and Super Pumped (2022).
Early life
Uma Karuna Thurman was born on April 29, 1970,[10] in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Robert Thurman, is a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies and an author,[11] who lived as an ordained Buddhist monk for three years. Her mother, Nena von Schlebrügge, a high-fashion model, was born in Mexico City to a German nobleman and a Swedish model, Birgit Holmquist.[12]
Thurman received a Buddhist upbringing, and spent altogether around two years in Almora, Uttarakhand, India.[13][14] She grew up mostly in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she went to Amherst Regional Junior High School, then moved to Woodstock, New York. She has three brothers, Ganden (b. 1967), Dechen Karl (b. 1973),[15] and Mipam (b. 1978), and a half-sister named Taya (b. 1961), from her father's previous marriage. Thurman's first cousin once removed is Swedish football player Max von Schlebrügge.[16]
She is described, in a 2004 biography, as having been an awkward and introverted girl who was teased for her appearance and unusual name (sometimes using the name "Uma Karen" instead of her birth name).[17] When Thurman was ten years old, a friend's mother suggested a nose job.[13] As a child, she suffered bouts of body dysmorphic disorder.[18] She attended Amherst Public Schools, where in eighth grade she discovered her love of acting. At age 14 she attended Northfield Mount Hermon School, a preparatory school in Massachusetts, where talent scouts noticed her performance as Abigail in a production of The Crucible[19] and offered her the chance to act professionally; she then dropped out to pursue an acting career.[13][20]
Career
Modeling and acting beginnings (1985–1989)
Thurman began her career as a fashion model at age 15,[21] and signed with the agency Click Models. Her early modeling credits included Glamour and the December 1985 and May 1986 covers of British Vogue.[22] She made the transition to acting with her film debut, the teen thriller Kiss Daddy Goodnight, which was released in 1987. Thurman was subsequently cast in three 1988 films — Johnny Be Good, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and most notably, Dangerous Liaisons. In the comedy Johnny Be Good, she played the girlfriend of a top high school quarterback prospect, and in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, she made a brief appearance as the goddess Venus; during her entrance she briefly appears nude, in an homage to Botticelli's The Birth of Venus.
In the Oscar-winning drama Dangerous Liaisons, co-starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich, Thurman took on the role of a naive teenager, raped by a manipulative man. The picture was an arthouse success, and garnered Thurman recognition from critics and audiences;[23][24] film critic Roger Ebert found her to be "well cast" in her "tricky" key role.[25] At the time, insecure about her appearance, she spent roughly a year in London, during which she often wore loose, baggy clothing.[22] Malkovich 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."[26]
Early prominence and Pulp Fiction (1990–1995)
In 1990, Thurman appeared with Fred Ward and Maria de Medeiros in Henry & June, a sexually provocative drama about the relationship and affairs between writer Henry Miller and his wife June Miller in 1931 Paris. This film was the first to receive an NC-17 rating and partly because many American newspapers refused to advertise films with the new rating, it did not get wide release in the United States. However, it won Thurman good notices; 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."[27] After playing Maid Marian in the 1991 British adventure film Robin Hood, Thurman began filming Dylan Thomas, a biopic on Welsh poet Dylan Thomas starring her then-husband Gary Oldman with herself as Caitlin Thomas, however the project was shut down shortly after filming began.[28] Thurman went on to star as the patient of a San Francisco psychiatrist in the neo-noir drama Final Analysis (1992), opposite Richard Gere and Kim Basinger, and as a blind woman romantically involved with a former policeman in the thriller Jennifer 8 (also 1992), with Andy García.
Thurman portrayed a young woman with unusually big thumbs in Gus Van Sant's 1993 adaptation of Tom Robbins' novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. The film was a critical and commercial failure, eventually earning Thurman a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actress. The Washington Post described her acting as shallow and remarked: "Thurman's strangely passive characterization doesn't go much deeper than drawling and flexing her prosthetic thumbs".[29] Also in 1993, she starred as a waitress opposite Robert De Niro and Bill Murray in the drama Mad Dog and Glory and auditioned for Stanley Kubrick while he was casting for his eventually unrealized adaptation of the novel Wartime Lies.[30]
Personal life
Relationships
Thurman met English actor Gary Oldman on the set of State of Grace; they married in 1990 and divorced in 1992.[152] On May 1, 1998, she married American actor Ethan Hawke, whom she met on the set of the 1997 film Gattaca. Hawke's novel Ash Wednesday is dedicated to "Karuna", Thurman's middle name.[153] Together, Thurman and Hawke have two children, a daughter, Maya (born in 1998), and a son, Levon (born in 2002).[154][155][156] The couple separated in 2003, and the divorce was finalized in August 2005.[156]
Thurman began dating London-based French financier Arpad Busson in 2007, and they announced their engagement in June 2008.[157] In late 2009, they called off their engagement,[158] but reconciled soon after.[159] The couple called off the engagement for the second time in April 2014.[160] Thurman and Busson have a daughter, Luna Thurman-Busson, born in July 2012.[161] In January 2017, Thurman and Busson began child custody negotiations in relation to their daughter,[162] which resulted in Thurman receiving primary physical custody later that month.[163]
Stalking incidents and sexual assaults
Thurman was the target of a stalker, Jack Jordan, from about 2004 to 2011.[164] He was arrested in October 2007 and, following a trial in which Thurman testified as a witness, was convicted of stalking and harassment charges the following May.[165][166] Sentenced to three years' probation, Jordan was arrested again in 2010 on charges of violating a restraining order by attempting to contact her.[167] He pleaded guilty in November 2011 after spending 11 months in jail in lieu of bail, and was released with time served.[168][169]
In 2017, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations, Thurman was interviewed, and, when asked about the scandal, she replied, "no comment," stating she was too angry to talk about the case.[170] A few weeks later, through an Instagram post, she joined the "Me Too" hashtag, confirming that she had suffered sexual harassment and expressing disgust for Harvey Weinstein.[171][172] In a 2018 interview with The New York Times, Thurman revealed that Weinstein had sexually assaulted her in 1994 at the Savoy Hotel in London. She also revealed that she had been sexually assaulted at age 16 by an actor nearly 20 years her senior.[173]
Kill Bill car crash
In the same 2018 New York Times interview, Thurman described how she had been in a serious car accident back in 2003 on the set of Kill Bill, because Tarantino had insisted she perform her own driving stunts.[173] Two weeks after the crash, she tried to see footage of the incident. Thurman stated that Miramax would only agree to show her the footage if she signed a contract "releasing them of any consequences of my future pain and suffering", which she refused.[173] As a result of the crash, she sustained permanent injuries to her neck and knees.[173] Tarantino later called this incident "the biggest regret of his life".[174] Thurman later clarified on Instagram that Tarantino had apologized to her for the incident and that she has since forgiven him,[175][176] being open to working with him again.[177]
Activism and political views
Thurman has been involved in various philanthropic and activist causes. She is a supporter of the Democratic Party, and has given money to the campaigns of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Joseph R. Driscoll.[178] She supports gun control laws, and in 2000 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 suffering poverty.[179] She serves on the board of the Tibet House US.[180] In 2007, she hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, with actor Kevin Spacey.[181]
In February 2008, ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, Thurman talked about human rights in China alongside Steven Spielberg and others, describing actions and policies carried out by the government of China as "horrible" and "unspeakable crimes against humanity".[182]
In 2011, Thurman was one of several celebrities associated with the USAID and Ad Council's FWD campaign, an awareness initiative tied to that year's East Africa drought. She joined Geena Davis, Chanel Iman and Josh Hartnett in TV and internet ads to "forward the facts" about the crisis.[183] During the same year, she also participated at Human Rights Campaign for LGBT civil rights, saying "We're fighting for a conservative value: the right to make a lifelong commitment to someone you love".[184] In 2015, Thurman joined "Rhino Rescue Project" and traveled to Southern Africa to assist and help relocate the threatened species of black rhinoceros;[140][185] being in close contact with rhinos, Thurman defined her experience with those animals to be "spiritual, surreal".[186][187]
In December 2017, amidst allegations of sexual misconduct against Roy Moore, Thurman voiced her disapproval of his candidacy in the United States Senate special election in Alabama.[188]
Thurman was critical of the Texas Heartbeat Act, an abortion ban that went into effect in September 2021. She called the law a "human rights crisis for American women", and discussed her experience of obtaining an abortion in her teens after she had been "accidentally impregnated by a much older man." She described her abortion as "the hardest decision of my life," but maintained that it "allowed me to grow up and become the mother I wanted and needed to be."[189]