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, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress. Often hailed as Tarantino's muse, she reunited with the director to play the main role in Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2 (2003, 2004), which brought her a BAFTA Award nomination and two additional Golden Globe Award nominations.

Established as a Hollywood actress, 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), The House That Jack Built (2018), and Hollywood Stargirl (2022). In 2011, she was a member of the jury for the main competition at the 64th Cannes Film Festival, 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). She also starred in the miniseries The Slap (2015) and the series Imposters (2017–2018), Chambers (2019) and Super Pumped (2022).

Uma Karuna Thurman was born on April 29, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Robert Thurman, is a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies and an author, 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.^{[citation needed]}

Thurman received a Buddhist upbringing, and spent altogether around two years in Almora, Uttarakhand, India. 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), 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 soccer player Max von Schlebrügge.

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). When Thurman was ten years old, a friend's mother suggested a nose job. As a child, she suffered bouts of body dysmorphic disorder. 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 and offered her the chance to act professionally; she then dropped out to pursue an acting career.

Thurman began her career as a fashion model at age 15, and signed with the agency Click Models. Her early modeling credits included Glamour and the December 1985 and May 1986 covers of British Vogue. 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, seduced by a manipulative man. The picture was an arthouse success, and garnered Thurman recognition from critics and audiences; film critic Roger Ebert found her to be "well cast" in her "tricky" key role. At the time, insecure about her appearance, she spent roughly a year in London, during which she often wore loose, baggy clothing. 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."