Biography of Uma ThurmanUma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970[1]) is an Academy Award-nominated American actress. She performs predominantly in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action thrillers. She is best known for her films directed by Quentin Tarantino. Her most popular films include Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Pulp Fiction (1994), Gattaca (1997) and the two Kill Bill movies (2003-04).
She is currently the "face" of Virgin Media in the United Kingdom and along with Scarlett Johansson, models handbags and other fashion items for clothes designer Louis Vuitton.
Thurman was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother, Nena Birgitte Caroline von Schlebrügge (b. 1941), was a fashion model who was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to German nobleman Friedrich Karl Johannes von Schlebrügge and Birgit Holmquist, who was from Trelleborg, Sweden. Birgit Holmquist, Thurman's grandmother, had stood model in 1930 for the statue of a nude woman that still stands overlooking the harbor of Trelleborg. Thurman's father, Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman, was born in New York City to Elizabeth Dean Farrar, a stage actress, and Beverly Reid Thurman, Jr., an Associated Press editor and U.N. translator. Thurman's mother was briefly married in 1964 to LSD guru Timothy Leary after the two were introduced by Salvador Dalí; she married Thurman's father in 1967.
Thurman's father, who would later become a recognized scholar and professor at Columbia University of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies, was the first westerner to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. He gave his children a Buddhist upbringing: Uma is named after an Uma Chenpo (in Tibetan; Mahamadhyamaka in Sanskrit, meaning "Great Middle Way"). She has three brothers, Ganden (b. 1971), Dechen (b. 1973) and Mipam (b. 1978), and a half-sister named Taya (b. 1960) from her father's previous marriage. She and her siblings spent extended amounts of time in Almora, India as children, and the Dalai Lama would sometimes visit their home.
Since Professor Thurman moved between various universities, the family often relocated when Uma was a child. She grew up mostly in Amherst, Massachusetts and Woodstock, New York. Thurman is described as having been an awkward and introverted young girl who was frequently teased as a child for her tall frame, unique angular bone structure, unusual name (sometimes using the name "Uma Karen" instead of her birth-name), and size 11 feet (Thurman's famously large feet would later be lovingly filmed by Quentin Tarantino in the films he made with her). Even friends made a point of highlighting her unusual features — when she was ten years old, a friend's mother suggested she receive a nose job.
Although these unique physical attributes would later make her beauty iconic, these childhood attentions may have led to her bouts with body dysmorphic disorder, a syndrome involving a disturbed body image, which she discussed in an interview with Talk magazine in 2001.
Thurman attended Northfield Mount Hermon, a college preparatory boarding school in Northfield, Massachusetts, where she received her first acting experiences in school plays. She was unathletic and earned average grades in school, but excelled in acting from a young age. It was after performing as Abigail in a production of The Crucible that she was noticed by talent scouts, and was persuaded to act professionally. Thurman left her high school to pursue an acting career in New York City and to attend the Professional Children's School where she dropped out before graduating.
Thurman began her career as a fashion model at the age of 15. She signed with the agency Click Models. Uma followed in the footsteps of her mother, who was also a fashion model. Standing six feet tall with a naturally lanky frame, Thurman was an immediate success, and her modeling credits included Glamour Magazine. In 1989, she appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, for the annual "Hot issue".
Thurman made her movie debut in 1988, appearing in a total of four films that year. Her first two were the high school comedy Johnny Be Good and the teen thriller Kiss Daddy Goodnight at the age of seventeen, but both films were only marginally successful and failed to gain her notice. Thurman’s next role was in the film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, playing the goddess Venus alongside Oliver Reed’s Vulcan. During her entrance Thurman briefly appears nude in a homage to Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus. With a budget of $46 million USD and box office receipts of only $8 million, the film was a commercial failure, although is now considered to be an artistic triumph and has gained an enthusiastic cult following.
Her fourth role, as Cecile de Volanges in Dangerous Liaisons, was her breakthrough role, which brought Thurman to the attention of the film industry and the general public. Actresses Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer earned Oscar nominations for their performances, and Thurman drew an inordinate amount of attention for a topless scene in which she appeared. Garnering the lion’s share of attention proved too much for the shy, insecure 19-year-old who thought she was funny-looking, and she fled to London for almost a year, during which she wore only loose, baggy clothing.
Soon after the release of Dangerous Liaisons, magazines and other media outlets were eager to profile the actress. Thurman received praise for her professionalism from her co-star John Malkovich, who 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".
In 1990, the 19-year-old Thurman co-starred with Fred Ward in the sexually provocative drama film Henry & June, the first film to receive an NC-17 rating. Because of the film’s restrictive rating, it never played in a wide release but would attract more attention to Thurman’s career. Critics embraced her in her first leading role, 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".
Thurman’s first starring role in a major production was 1993’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (directed by Gus Van Sant), although the film was a misstep for her being a critical and financial disappointment (Thurman was even nominated for a Worst Actress Razzie). The Washington Post described her acting as shallow, writing that, "Thurman’s strangely passive characterization doesn’t go much deeper than drawling and flexing her prosthetic thumbs". Thurman also starred opposite Robert De Niro in the crime drama Mad Dog and Glory, another box office disappointment. Later that year, she auditioned for Stanley Kubrick while he was casting a movie to be called Wartime Lies, which was never produced. She described working with him as a "really bad experience".
While living in London to avoid the Dangerous Liaisons hype, she began dating director Phil Joanou, who had just produced U2’s movie Rattle and Hum in 1988. While visiting the set of his latest project, State Of Grace, she met English actor Gary Oldman. The two hit it off immediately and were married in 1990, but the marriage only lasted two years, reportedly caused by the little time they spent together due to their busy acting schedules.
On May 1, 1998, she married actor Ethan Hawke, after the two met at the set of Gattaca; he subsequently dedicated his novel ("To Karuna"), to her. Prior to their engagement, Hawke had proposed twice before she accepted. Thurman herself acknowledged that they married early on because she had become pregnant; at the time of their wedding she was seven months along. The couple have two children, daughter Maya Ray (b. July 8, 1998) and son Levon Roan (b. January 15, 2002).
In 2003, Thurman and Hawke separated, and in 2004 they filed for divorce. Many news outlets reported that the cause of the divorce was because Hawke had cheated on Thurman with Canadian model Jen Perzow. Hawke denied that the cause of the divorce was infidelity, saying that it was caused by their busy work schedules. In a 2004 Rolling Stone cover story, Thurman and Quentin Tarantino denied ever having a romantic relationship, despite Tarantino once having told a reporter, "I’m not saying that we haven’t, and I’m not saying that we have". When asked on The Oprah Winfrey Show if there was "betrayal of some kind" during the marriage, Thurman said, "There was some stuff like that at the end. We were having a difficult time, and you know how the axe comes down and how people behave and how people express their unhappiness".
She currently resides in Hyde Park, New York. In 2004, she began dating New York hotelier Andre Balazs. At one point, they lived in a loft apartment in New York City's SoHo neighborhood, down the street from Balazs’s Mercer Hotel. Thurman also owns a townhouse in the New York neighborhood of Greenwich Village. In March 2006, Thurman’s publicist announced that the couple had split. However, they continued dating on-and-off afterwards but split finally in March 2007.
In October 2007, Thurman was said to be engaged to Arpad Busson, supermodel Elle Macpherson's former husband, who she had been dating since summer 2007. However, contrary to these reports, Thurman's rep has confirmed that Thurman and Busson are not engaged and currently have no marriage plans.
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