Uma Thurman

Biography

Uma Thurman, born in Boston in 1970, is an American actress and former model best known for her work with Quentin Tarantino. She began modelling as a teenager and moved into film in the late 1980s. Her career spans drama, comedy, science fiction, action and independent cinema. An Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winner, she became one of the most recognisable screen actresses of the 1990s and 2000s.

The daughter of Buddhist studies professor Robert Thurman and the model Nena von Schlebrügge, she spent part of her childhood in India and grew up mainly in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Woodstock, New York. As a teenager she was shy and has spoken about being teased for her height and her unusual name. She left boarding school to pursue acting after talent scouts saw her in a school production of The Crucible. Before films, she had appeared on the covers of British Vogue.

She made her film debut in 1987 with Kiss Daddy Goodnight, and in 1988 drew attention with Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a commercial flop on release that later built a cult following. The same year she appeared in Dangerous Liaisons as a naive young woman seduced by a manipulative man. In 1990 she starred in Henry & June, a sexually frank drama that became the first film to receive the NC-17 rating in the United States and was barely distributed there. In 1993 she worked with Gus Van Sant on Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, a critical and commercial failure that earned her a Razzie nomination.

Her breakthrough came in 1994 with Pulp Fiction, where she played Mia Wallace, a gangster's wife. Tarantino chose her after a screen test and a dinner together, and the role earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her subsequent projects varied widely. Batman & Robin (1997), in which she played the villain Poison Ivy, was a box-office disappointment, while Gattaca, opposite Ethan Hawke, received strong reviews and did well on home video. After the birth of her first daughter in 1998, she stepped back from leading roles for a while. She returned with Hysterical Blindness, an HBO film that won her a Golden Globe.

In 2003 and 2004 she reunited with Tarantino for Kill Bill, playing the Bride across two volumes. The role renewed her prestige and brought a BAFTA nomination. Since then she has moved between mainstream projects and more daring films such as Nymphomaniac and The House That Jack Built, and between film and television, where she earned an Emmy nomination for a guest role in Smash. She has also worked on stage, making her Broadway debut in The Parisian Woman. Her legacy rests on the strong and ambiguous women she created in Tarantino's films. More recently she has continued to work in series such as Dexter: Resurrection.

Key films

• Pulp Fiction (1994): Mia Wallace, the role that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
• Dangerous Liaisons (1988): a naive young woman seduced by a manipulative man, an early breakthrough with critics.
• Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003): the Bride, in the first part of her collaboration with Tarantino.
• Gattaca (1997): co-starring with Ethan Hawke in a story about genetic engineering and social class.
• Batman & Robin (1997): Poison Ivy, the villain in the fourth film of the series, remembered for its reception.