Uma Thurman

Known for her statuesque beauty and sophisticated demeanor, American actress Uma Thurman began appearing in films in the late 1980s before landing her breakout role as raven-haired trophy wife Mia Wallace in Quentin Tarantino’s neo-noir Pulp Fiction (1994). It was not long before Thurman began expanding her range in a variety of films that showcased her comedy flair and hinted at her capability as an action-movie star. That ability came to fruition when Thurman collaborated with Tarantino again, on Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), both ultraviolent films in which she played an avenging assassin. Later she found regular work in television series such as Smash (2012) and Suspicion (2022).

Childhood and family background

Thurman comes from an impressive lineage of intellectuals, nobles, and bohemians. Her father, Robert Thurman, was a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University and the first known Westerner to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Her mother, Nena von Schlebrügge, was a fashion model turned psychotherapist whose first husband was LSD advocate Timothy Leary. Thurman’s maternal grandfather, Baron Karl von Schlebrügge, was jailed by the Nazis during World War II for refusing to betray his Jewish business partners, and her maternal grandmother, Birgit Holmquist, was a famous Swedish model. Thurman’s childhood was nomadic, divided between time in India; her family’s home in Woodstock, New York; and Amherst, Massachusetts, where her father taught at Amherst College. Thurman has recalled that her family—which includes her three brothers—was “practically a debating team.”

Career

Thurman wanted to be an actress from a young age, once describing her childhood self as “a real ham.” Although she was self-conscious as a young girl about her taller-than-average height, she began modeling in New York City as a teenager while pursing an acting career and attended the Professional Children’s School. However, by the time she was 16, she had left school and was living independently from her parents in a studio apartment in Manhattan. In 1987 she landed her first film role, in the formulaic thriller Kiss Daddy Goodnight. The next year she appeared in three movies: Johnny Be Good, a teen sports comedy starring Anthony Michael Hall as a high-school quarterback; The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a fantasy film directed by Terry Gilliam in which Thurman played the love goddess Venus; and Dangerous Liaisons, in which she held her own as the naive, convent-raised Cécile de Volanges in scenes with established stars John Malkovich, Glenn Close, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Dangerous Liaisons earned the then 18-year-old actress a short feature in The New York Times, which noted that her role had earned her critical praise. Thurman spoke with empathy about her character, whose rape and dishonor are cruelly engineered by Close’s scheming Marquise de Merteuil. Thurman said, “The girl’s own nature is turned against her—her desires, curiosity, eagerness to please. The predicament of the character interested me a great deal.”

Her next notable role was no less provocative. In 1989 she starred as June Miller, the wife of novelist Henry Miller, in Henry & June, which explores the real-life erotic love triangle between the Millers and French writer Anaïs Nin. The film had the distinction of being the first movie to receive an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Thurman’s next few films were more standard fare. Among her notable performances in these, she played Maid Marian in Robin Hood (1991) and a hitchhiker with enormous thumbs who crisscrosses America in search of her sexual identity in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), which was adapted from Tom Robbins’s cult novel.

In 1994 Thurman broke through with her portrayal of Mia Wallace in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, which also featured a who’s who of Hollywood heavyweights, including Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel, and Christopher Walken. The Washington Post wrote in its review, “Uma Thurman, serenely unrecognizable in a black wig, is marvelous as a zoned-out gangster’s [wife].” Her performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress.

For the rest of the 1990s Thurman stretched her range, appearing in ensemble comedies, period pieces, action films, romantic comedies, and big-screen reboots of classic TV shows. She starred opposite Vanessa Redgrave in A Month by the Lake (1995), played the object of every man’s desire in Beautiful Girls (1996) and The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), portrayed the villainous Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin (1997) and the doomed Fantine in Les Misérables (1998), and appeared in The Avengers (1998) and Sweet and Lowdown (1999). On the set of the science fiction film Gattaca (1997), Thurman met costar Ethan Hawke, and they married in 1998. (Thurman had previously been married to actor Gary Oldman, from 1990 to 1992.) Hawke and Thurman had two children, Maya (who became a model and actress) and Levon, before divorcing in 2005.

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Thurman and Tarantino reteamed to write the screenplays for Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2, in which Thurman starred as Beatrix Kiddo (“AKA The Bride, AKA Black Mamba, AKA Mommy”), an assassin who seeks revenge on those who had tried to kill her. Featuring intense martial arts and swordplay scenes, the film demanded months of training by Thurman and her costars. Although the two movies were polarizing (some critics considered them feminist films; others called them empty of meaning), Thurman was a formidable action star. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “ ‘Kill Bill, Volume 1’ is not the kind of movie that inspires discussion of the acting, but what Thurman, [Vivica] Fox and [Lucy] Liu accomplish here is arguably more difficult than playing the nuanced heroine of a Sundance [Film Festival] thumb-sucker. There must be presence, physical grace, strength, personality and the ability to look serious while doing ridiculous things.”

In 2003 Thurman and Ben Affleck headlined the sci-fi thriller Paycheck, directed by John Woo. In 2005 she appeared opposite Travolta again, in the crime comedy Be Cool. That same year she and Meryl Streep had the lead roles in the romantic comedy Prime, and Thurman played the Swedish bombshell Ulla in The Producers, with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. Her other notable film roles include My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006), Motherhood (2009), Ceremony (2010), Playing for Keeps (2012), and The Kill Room (2023).

In the 2010s Thurman began doing more television work, appearing in series such as Smash (2012), The Slap (2015), Imposters (2017–18), Chambers (2019), Suspicion (2022), and Super Pumped (2022– ). She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her work in Smash. In 2017 Thurman made her Broadway debut in a production of Beau Willimon’s play The Parisian Woman.

Me Too statements

During the Me Too movement, Thurman was among the Hollywood actresses who spoke out against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who had produced several of her films and been accused of sexual assault by numerous women. Initially, she told reporters that she had too much anger to process before sharing her experience with sexual abuse and harassment. Then in November 2017, on Thanksgiving Day, she posted a message on Instagram: “I said I was angry recently, and I have a few reasons, #metoo, in case you couldn’t tell by the look on my face. I feel it’s important to take your time, be fair, be exact, so…Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! (Except you Harvey, and all your wicked conspirators…).”

A few months later she disclosed to The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that Weinstein had attempted to sexually assault her in the 1990s. She also told Dowd that, while working on the Kill Bill films, Tarantino had pressured her to drive a convertible (which she described as a “deathbox”) in one scene even though she had wanted a stunt person to handle it instead. Thurman wound up crashing the car into a tree and said that the accident permanently damaged her neck and knees. She told Dowd, “I went from being a creative contributor and performer to being like a broken tool.” After Dowd’s column was published, Tarantino called his decision to make Thurman do the stunt one of the biggest regrets of his life.