Uma Thurman

• 1. Introduction

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  Uma Thurman and Quentin Tarantino once imagined a character from one image: a bride covered in blood. The two of them came up with it on the set of Pulp Fiction, long before anyone shot a frame of what became Kill Bill. That picture suits an actress whose career has swung between cult triumphs and expensive failures. Since the 1980s, Thurman has appeared in more than fifty film and television productions. They run from comedy and drama to science fiction and action, and she has also worked on stage.

  Three questions run through her story. How does the daughter of a Buddhist scholar and a fashion model end up in front of cameras so young? Why did some of her sharpest performances land in films that critics and audiences ignored? And what did the job cost her along the way?

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• 2. A Buddhist Childhood

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  Uma Karuna Thurman was born on the 29th of April 1970 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Robert Thurman, is a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies and an author, and he spent three years living as an ordained Buddhist monk. Her mother, Nena von Schlebrügge, worked as a high-fashion model. Nena herself was born in Mexico City to a German nobleman and a Swedish model named Birgit Holmquist.

  About two years of Thurman's Buddhist upbringing unfolded in Almora, Uttarakhand, India. Most of her childhood, though, took place in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she attended Amherst Regional Junior High School. The family later moved to Woodstock, New York. She grew up with three brothers: Ganden, born in 1967, Dechen Karl, born in 1973, and Mipam, born in 1978. A half-sister, Taya, born in 1961, came from her father's earlier marriage. Her first cousin once removed is the Swedish soccer player Max von Schlebrügge.

  A 2004 biography describes the young Thurman as awkward and introverted. She was teased about her looks and her unusual name, and she sometimes called herself Uma Karen instead. At the age of ten, she heard a friend's mother suggest a nose job. As a child, she suffered bouts of body dysmorphic disorder.

  In eighth grade, at Amherst Public Schools, Thurman discovered that she loved acting. At fourteen she enrolled at Northfield Mount Hermon School, a preparatory school in Massachusetts. There, talent scouts watched her play Abigail in a production of The Crucible and offered her professional work. She dropped out to take it.

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• 3. Early Gambles

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  At fifteen, Thurman signed with the agency Click Models and began working as a fashion model. Her credits included Glamour, and British Vogue put her on its covers in December 1985 and May 1986. Her film debut came in 1987 with the teen thriller Kiss Daddy Goodnight. In 1988 she appeared in three films. In Johnny Be Good she played the girlfriend of a top high school quarterback prospect. In The Adventures of Baron Munchausen she had a brief turn as the goddess Venus, entering nude in a nod to Botticelli's The Birth of Venus.

  Dangerous Liaisons, the third of those 1988 films, mattered most. Glenn Close and John Malkovich co-starred in the Oscar-winning drama, and Thurman played a naive teenager seduced by a manipulative man. The picture succeeded in arthouse cinemas, and critics and audiences took notice of her. Roger Ebert judged her "well cast" in a "tricky" key role.

  After Dangerous Liaisons, Thurman spent roughly a year in London, often wearing loose, baggy clothes, because she felt insecure about her appearance. John Malkovich saw her differently. He said: "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."

  Henry & June, released in 1990, put Thurman opposite Fred Ward and Maria de Medeiros. The sexually provocative drama follows the writer Henry Miller, his wife June, and their affairs in 1931 Paris. It was the first film to receive an NC-17 rating. Many American newspapers refused to advertise films with that new rating, which partly explains why it never reached a wide release in the United States. Her notices were still good. The New York Times said she took a larger-than-life character "and makes her even bigger," though the performance was "often as curious as it is commanding."

  Maid Marian in the 1991 British adventure Robin Hood came next. Then Thurman began filming Dylan Thomas, a biopic of the Welsh poet starring her then-husband Gary Oldman, with her as Caitlin Thomas. The project shut down shortly after filming began. In 1992 she played a San Francisco psychiatrist's patient in Final Analysis, opposite Richard Gere and Kim Basinger. That year she also played a blind woman involved with a former policeman in Jennifer 8, alongside Andy García.

  Gus Van Sant's 1993 adaptation of Tom Robbins' novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues gave Thurman a young woman with unusually big thumbs to play. It failed with critics and at the box office, and it earned her a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Actress. The Washington Post wrote that her "strangely passive characterization doesn't go much deeper than drawling and flexing her prosthetic thumbs." That same year she played a waitress opposite Robert De Niro and Bill Murray in Mad Dog and Glory. She also auditioned for Stanley Kubrick, who was casting an adaptation of the novel Wartime Lies that was never made. The following year brought Pulp Fiction.

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• 4. Mia Wallace

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  Quentin Tarantino considered several actresses for Mia Wallace, the wife of a Los Angeles mobster in his neo-noir black comedy Pulp Fiction (1994). After meeting Thurman, he wanted her. The film earned $213.9 million worldwide and won widespread acclaim. It now appears on many critics' lists of the greatest films ever made.

  Of all the characters in 1990s cinema, Mia is regarded as one of the most iconic women, and Thurman dominated most of the film's promotional material. The Washington Post called her "serenely unrecognizable in a black wig" and "marvelous as a zoned-out gangster's girlfriend."

  The performance brought Thurman nominations for the Golden Globe and for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. It launched her onto the celebrity A-list. She then did something unusual. For the next three years she chose not to make any big-budget films.

  Tarantino, who considers Thurman his muse, told Time magazine in 2003 that she was "up there with Garbo and Dietrich in goddess territory."

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• 5. Hits and Flops

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  Two 1996 releases kept Thurman working after Pulp Fiction. In Beautiful Girls she played a fairly wise love interest. In The Truth About Cats & Dogs she was top-billed as a ditzy blonde model. Both were modest commercial successes with positive reviews.

  Gattaca, released in 1997, paired Thurman with Ethan Hawke. The science fiction film imagines a society driven by eugenics, where children are conceived through genetic manipulation. Critics praised it. Box office receipts were lackluster, yet it did well on home video.

  Batman & Robin, also from 1997, cost $160 million and grossed a modest $238 million worldwide. It is often counted among the worst films ever made. Thurman played the supervillain Poison Ivy, and her performance was largely singled out at the time. The Houston Chronicle said she "sometimes seems to be doing Mae West by way of Jessica Rabbit." She won a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Best Sci-fi Actress and was nominated for Favourite Movie Actress at the Kids' Choice Awards.

  In 1998 Thurman played Fantine in Bille August's film of Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables. Rotten Tomatoes described the adaptation as "intelligent, handsomely crafted." Roger Ebert wrote that "Thurman's performance is the best element." Her other 1998 film, The Avengers, went badly. She played a British secret agent in a notable financial and critical flop. CNN said she seemed "so distanced you feel like you're watching her through the wrong end of a telescope."

  In 1999 Thurman performed in an update of Molière's The Misanthrope at the Classic Stage Company. She also played a socialite opposite Sean Penn in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown. By then she had stepped away from acting after becoming a mother, taking only a few small, low-budget projects. During that break she turned down the role of Éowyn in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. She considers it one of the worst decisions she ever made.

  The Golden Bowl, in 2000, gave her the lead in an adaptation of Henry James's 1904 novel. In November 2000 she narrated John Moran's opera Book of the Dead (2nd Avenue) at The Public Theater. In Vatel, she played Anne de Montausier, love interest of the 17th-century French chef François Vatel.

  Richard Linklater's real-time drama Tape (2001) cast Thurman as the former girlfriend of a drug dealer and volunteer firefighter, played by Ethan Hawke. The role earned her an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Female. Hawke then directed her in Chelsea Walls, a drama about artists spending a single day in New York's Chelsea Hotel.

  Hysterical Blindness, an HBO film from 2002, brought Thurman a Golden Globe. She was also one of its executive producers. She played a New Jersey woman in the 1980s searching for romance. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that she "so commits herself to the role, eyes blazing and body akimbo, that you start to believe that such a creature could exist." The reviewer added that she had "bent the role to her will."

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• 6. The Bride

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  Kill Bill, released in two parts in 2003 and 2004, reunited Thurman with Tarantino. In this martial arts action film she played Beatrix Kiddo, an assassin out for revenge against her former lover. Tarantino wrote the part specifically for her and cited her as his muse while he worked. He gave her joint credit for the character. The project was meant to be a single film, but its long running time led to a two-part release.

  Pam Grier's title character in Coffy and Gena Rowlands's Gloria Swenson in Gloria were Thurman's main inspirations. She described them as "two of the only women I've ever seen be truly women while holding a weapon."

  Shooting took nine months and moved through five different countries. It was also Thurman's most demanding role. She spent three months training in martial arts, swordsmanship, and Japanese. Production paused for several months when she became pregnant, because Tarantino refused to recast the part.

  Both volumes did well with critics and audiences and gathered a cult following. Rolling Stone compared Thurman to "an avenging angel out of a 1940s Hollywood melodrama." Awards bodies noticed too. She earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role, a Critics' Choice Movie Award nomination, and Golden Globe nominations for each volume. The MTV Movie Awards nominated her three times for Best Female Performance and twice for Best Fight.

  In a 2018 interview with The New York Times, Thurman described a serious car accident from 2003 on the Kill Bill set. She said Tarantino had insisted she do her own driving stunts. Two weeks later she tried to see footage of the crash. Miramax would show it only if she signed a contract releasing the company from responsibility for her "future pain and suffering." She refused. The crash left her with permanent injuries to her neck and knees.

  Tarantino later called the incident "the biggest regret of his life." Thurman said on Instagram that he had apologized, that she had forgiven him, and that she was open to working with him again.

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• 7. Stage, Screen, Streaming

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  By 2005, Thurman reportedly commanded $12.5 million per film. That year she had a cameo in The Naked Brothers Band: The Movie and three major releases. Be Cool, the sequel to 1995's Get Shorty, reunited her with Pulp Fiction co-star John Travolta. Reviews were lukewarm, but it grossed $95 million.

  In Prime, opposite Meryl Streep, she played a lonely divorced businesswoman who begins a relationship with a much younger man, played by Bryan Greenberg. It earned $67.9 million internationally. In the remake of The Producers she played Ulla, a Swedish stage actress hoping for a part in a new Broadway musical, and she is credited for her songs. A. O. Scott of The New York Times called her "the one bit of genuine radiance" in an "aggressively and pointlessly shiny, noisy spectacle."

  My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006) paid her $14 million to play a superhero who takes revenge on the boyfriend who dumped her. Critics panned it, and it made a modest $61 million worldwide. Entertainment Weekly thought casting her as the antagonist was a miscalculation. The Life Before Her Eyes (2007), in which she played an accident survivor whose guilt unravels her life, had a limited release and was dismissed by critics.

  The Accidental Husband (2008), with Colin Firth and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, played in theaters abroad but went to DVD in North America because its distributor had financial problems. That year she also played a cocaine addict in the British television drama My Zinc Bed, which drew poor ratings. Motherhood (2009) followed, with Thurman as a New York City mother on one pivotal day. "I've never really played a realistic mom before," she said. The independent film earned just $93,388 in three weeks of limited release. In 2010 she appeared briefly as Medusa, a gorgon cursed by Athena, in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.

  In 2011 Thurman served on the jury for the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Her only film that year was Ceremony, in which she played a woman on the eve of her wedding who reconnects with an old fling, played by Michael Angarano. It screened at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival before going to video on demand and selected theaters. She also took roles in Bel Ami (2012), Playing for Keeps (2012), and the Lois Lane segment of Movie 43 (2013). Critics panned all three, and they flopped at the box office. Reviewing Ceremony, Elizabeth Weitzman of the New York Daily News wrote: "She gets stuck in so many small, undeserving projects, one has to wonder who's mapping out her career."

  Television offered a different path in 2012, when Thurman joined the first season of Smash. Over five episodes she played Rebecca Duvall, a Hollywood actress who wants to star in a new Broadway musical despite limited musical ability. The A.V. Club said she was "a lot of fun," playing both the shallow, demanding side of celebrity and the sincere, talented side. She earned a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.

  In Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac (2013), she played Mrs. H, a rejected wife who confronts her estranged husband in Volume I. Her screen time was limited, but Rolling Stone called her "sensational" and Vanity Fair found her "downright terrific." She received a Bodil Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and won the BAMBI Award for Best International Actress in 2014.

  In 2015 Thurman starred in the NBC miniseries The Slap, the American version of an Australian series about the fallout after a man slaps another couple's misbehaving child. She also played the restaurant critic Simone in Burnt, with Bradley Cooper. In 2017 she took a recurring role as a fixer on the Bravo dark comedy Imposters, which ran for two seasons. That year she was also named president of the Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard jury.

  Thurman made her Broadway debut in The Parisian Woman, a play by Beau Willimon set in Washington, D.C. She played a socialite grappling with politics, her past, her marriage, and an uncertain future. The play ran for 141 performances, including previews, between November 2017 and March 2018. Critics were mixed, but Playbill described the box office as strong. The New York Times said her intelligence and innate glamour "make it possible to care about someone you do not believe in." She won the Broadway.com Audience Award for Favorite Leading Actress in a Play.

  The Con Is On, a heist comedy she filmed in 2015 opposite Tim Roth, reached audiences on the 4th of May 2018. The two played con artists planning a jewel heist in Los Angeles after fleeing a notorious Russian gangster. Ten days later, on the 14th of May 2018, Lars von Trier's psychological horror film The House That Jack Built premiered at Cannes. Thurman played the first victim of a serial killer in the 1980s. Down a Dark Hall (2018), directed by Rodrigo Cortés, cast her as Madame Duret, the eccentric headmistress of a school for troubled girls. Variety said she "cuts an elegant figure" but that her villain could have used more mystery and wit.

  Chambers, a Netflix supernatural horror series, arrived on the 26th of April 2019 with Thurman as a grieving mother. Alex McLevy of The A.V. Club said she "sold the hell out of" a role he found over-written. That year Italy's David di Donatello Film Awards gave her a career honorary award. She also played Helene Alving in a revival of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

  The War with Grandpa reunited her with Robert De Niro, her Mad Dog and Glory co-star. She played the daughter of his recently widowed character. Filmed in May 2017, it endured a lengthy post-production after the closure of its original distributor, The Weinstein Company. 101 Studios released it in North America on the 9th of October 2020. Reviews were negative, but its US$40 million worldwide gross was deemed a success during the COVID-19 pandemic. That October she also narrated The Age of Nature, a three-part documentary series on PBS.

  Suspicion premiered on Apple TV+ on the 4th of February 2022, with Thurman as an American media mogul whose son is kidnapped. Critics noted she was barely in it despite heavy promotion. On the 27th of February 2022, Showtime debuted The Battle For Uber, the first season of the anthology series Super Pumped. She played Arianna Huffington. Brian Lowry of CNN praised her Greek accent, while Adrian Horton of The Guardian called the portrayal "a cringey caricature." Hollywood Stargirl, with Thurman as Roxanne Martel, reached Disney+ on the 3rd of June 2022.

  In 2023 she played an art dealer in the crime thriller The Kill Room, alongside Pulp Fiction collaborator Samuel L. Jackson. She also played fictional US president Ellen Claremont in Red, White & Royal Blue. She joined Charlize Theron in the cast of the sequel The Old Guard 2, released in 2025. Dexter: Resurrection, in which she stars, began airing that same year.

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• 8. Beyond the Screen

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  The lavender Prada dress that Thurman wore to the 67th Academy Awards, on the 27th of March 1995, drew admiring coverage. Stylecaster.com later said it made her known for her fashion sense and gave Prada instant worldwide name recognition. Her crimson Alberta Ferretti gown at the 72nd Academy Awards, on the 26th of March 2000, also remains notable. The Daily Telegraph voted it the 20th greatest red carpet gown of all time.

  Lancôme, TAG Heuer, Louis Vuitton, and Parfums Givenchy have all used her as a face and spokeswoman. She posed for the 2014 Campari Calendar and was among the actresses photographed by Peter Lindbergh for the 2017 Pirelli Calendar.

  On the 7th of February 2006, France named Thurman a knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for outstanding achievement in art and literature. In 2015 the American rock band Fall Out Boy released a song called "Uma Thurman," celebrating her roles in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. She gave permission for the use of her name. On the Today Show she called the gesture "unbelievably polite and gracious of them." In 2020, scientists named a new species of fringe-toed lizard from southwest Arizona Uma thurmanae in her honor.

  Thurman met the English actor Gary Oldman on the set of State of Grace. They married in 1990 and divorced in 1992. On the 1st of May 1998 she married the American actor Ethan Hawke, whom she had met on the set of Gattaca. His novel Ash Wednesday is dedicated to "Karuna," her middle name. They have a daughter, Maya, born in 1998, and a son, Levon, born in 2002. The couple separated in 2003, and the divorce was finalized in August 2005.

  From 2003 to 2007 she was engaged to the American businessman and hotelier André Balazs, though they never married. They briefly rekindled their relationship in 2014-2015. In 2007 she began dating the London-based French financier Arpad Busson. They announced an engagement in June 2008, called it off in late 2009, reconciled soon after, and ended it again in April 2014. Their daughter, Luna Thurman-Busson, was born in July 2012. Custody negotiations began in January 2017, and Thurman received primary physical custody later that month. She dated the architect Peter Sabbeth in 2020, and as of 2021 she was dating the American media executive Justin B. Smith.

  A man named Jack Jordan stalked Thurman from about 2004 to 2011. He was arrested in October 2007. Thurman testified as a witness at his trial, and the following May he was convicted of stalking and harassment. He received three years of probation. In 2010 he was arrested again for trying to contact her in violation of a restraining order. After 11 months in jail in lieu of bail, he pleaded guilty in November 2011 and was released with time served.

  In 2017, as the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations broke, Thurman was asked about the scandal. "No comment," she replied, adding that she was too angry to discuss it. A few weeks later, an Instagram post joined the "Me Too" hashtag. In it she confirmed that she had suffered sexual harassment and expressed disgust for Weinstein. In a 2018 interview with The New York Times, she said Weinstein had sexually assaulted her in 1994 at the Savoy Hotel in London. She also said an actor nearly 20 years her senior had assaulted her when she was 16.

  Thurman supports the Democratic Party and has donated to the campaigns of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Joseph R. Driscoll. She backs gun control, and in 2000 she took part in Marie Claire's "End Gun Violence Now" campaign. She sits on the board of Room to Grow, a charity that helps families and children in poverty. She also serves on the board of Tibet House US.

  In 2007 she hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, with the actor Kevin Spacey. In February 2008, ahead of that year's Summer Olympics in Beijing, she spoke about human rights in China alongside Steven Spielberg and others. In 2011 she joined Geena Davis, Chanel Iman, and Josh Hartnett in ads for the USAID and Ad Council FWD campaign on that year's East Africa drought. The same year she backed the Human Rights Campaign, saying: "We're fighting for a conservative value: the right to make a lifelong commitment to someone you love." In 2015 she traveled to Southern Africa with the Rhino Rescue Project to help relocate threatened black rhinoceroses. She called being in close contact with the animals "spiritual, surreal."

  The Texas Heartbeat Act, an abortion ban that took effect in September 2021, drew her criticism. She called it a "human rights crisis for American women." She also described obtaining an abortion in her teens after she had been "accidentally impregnated by a much older man." She called that decision "the hardest decision of my life," yet said it "allowed me to grow up and become the mother I wanted and needed to be."

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