Mirror.co.uk – January 16, 2004

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The Life and Times of Uma Thurman

By Anna Day
Source: Mirror

The Paycheck star has everything a woman needs.

She’s rich, successful and can make a coal sack look like it was designed by Dior. Is there a woman alive who wouldn’t love to be Uma Thurman? The star of John Woo’s new thriller Paycheck, Uma is one of the highest earning movie stars in the world and, with the second volume of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill released next month, her star will just keep on rising.

Here is our guide to living life the Uma Thurman way.

Paycheck is released today.

BIZARRE CHILDHOOD

Uma’s parents were the traditional bohemian couple. Her father Robert is a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University School Of Religion. He was the first westerner to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk and the Dalai Lama stays with him when visiting America.

Her mother Nena is a Swedish psychotherapist and former model who was discovered as a 16-year-old in Stockholm by photographer Norman Parkinson. A nude statue of Nena’s mother, Brigit Holmquist, a famous beauty and later baroness, stands in the port town of Trelleborg. Nena’s first husband (briefly in 1964) was Timothy Leary, the legendary ’60s LSD guru. They were introduced by Salvador Dali.

So, if you’re an aspiring film star whose parents are teachers and live in a semi-detached in Kettering, get yourself adopted. Quick.

LOVE YOURSELF

As a young girl, Uma was embarrassed by her size nine and a half feet as they were at least twice as big as any other kid in her class at school. But as she’s grown and her peers have caught up with her, she’s learned to love her tootsies. She tries to get them a starring role in every film she makes, from being the subject of a jealous husband in Pulp Fiction – he threw someone over a balcony for giving her a foot massage – to the battle to move her little toe in Kill Bill.

Buying shoes is still a nightmare. “I have to go and get them made specially,” she says. “I get gorgeous high heels and delicate straps. When you haven’t got much money and huge feet

there’s not a whole load of shoes you can buy. It’s one of the reasons I’m grateful to have money now.”

BODY BEAUTIFUL

Once you get up to Ms Thurman’s ankles, she’s a stylish lady. As a teenager growing up in Boston, Massachussetts, she was teased about her lanky body, but now she is the perfect clothes’ horse. Uma was a model for a year before breaking into acting which elevated her from baggy T-shirts to the world of Dior, Valentino and Armani.

In 1998, as her film career was hitting new heights, Uma was shocked at being declared a modern sex siren and once again hid her frame in baggy clothes.

“I was amazed that showing my body would have such an overwhelming affect on the media,” she says. Uma then fled to Britain to lay low.

A $1m offer from Lancome to promote their cosmetics brought her back to American soil, but she was dropped last year.

“Every girl wants to turn heads, sure, but I don’t wear spray-on clothes or hardly any clothes at all,” she says. “I dress like a lady.”

Most recently she has been spotted sporting a natty line in yellow jumpsuits in Kill Bill, managing to look more of a sex symbol than a lumpy banana It’s just not fair.

THE MAN-EATER

Uma doesn’t go in for casual dating and moving in with a new bloke. She just marches straight down the aisle and then repents at her leisure. Her first wedding, in 1990, was to the incredibly talented but tense Gary Oldman. He was 32 and divorced, she was 20 and they were deeply in love for two years. Both maintained a discreet hush about the split.

Time passed and she fell again, this time for Ethan Hawke when the couple starred in Gattica together. They bounced down the aisle on May 1, 1998 after a year-long relationship, the bride looking radiant in white with a bump the size of Arizona.

Maya, now five, was born two months later and Levon (often known as Roan because, apparently, Maya likes that name) followed in January 2002.

But as the publicity for Kill Bill put Uma back into the spotlight, stories emerged that her loving husband was straying with a lap dancer. She threw him out.

SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT

Although Uma always wanted to act and had never thought of an alternative job, she claims her stage career was a way of combating shyness rather than the flowering of an obvious talent.

“I went to New York at 15 and I think there was an advantage to being a young teenage actress who was sort of playing hooky from high school,” she says. “I wasn’t devastated by rejection. I kind of grew up into an acting career without actually approaching it in the serious, desperate, hungry way that people often do when they come to it much older.”

It worked. She won her first role at 16 as a young vamp in Kiss Daddy Goodnight (1987), moving on to bigger and better things in Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and eventually Pulp Fiction (1994).

There have been some real turkeys along the way, such as the villainous Poison Ivy (Batman & Robin) and sexy secret agent Emma Peel in the remake of The Avengers. But Uma doesn’t let the criticism get to her.

“Desperation is the perfume of the young actor,” she says. “It’s so satisfying to have gotten rid of it. If you keep smelling it, it can drive you crazy. People go nuts.”

TRIBUTES TO A STAR

Search all you like, ask whoever you want, nobody has a bad word to say about Uma. Here’s a selection of fawning Uma tributes.

“She gets up out of a chair and you want to applaud, she’s just so graceful.” Kate Beckinsale.

“A Jayne Mansfield body and a horrifyingly great brain.” John Malkovich, who worked with 18-year-old Uma on Dangerous Liaisons.

“If you’re Josef Von Sternberg and you’re about to start shooting Morocco in 1930 and Marlene Dietrich gets pregnant, what do you do? Do you go ahead and make the movie with someone else? Of course not. You wait for Dietrich. And film history will thank you.” Quentin Tarantino justifies that Kill Bill delay decision.

FITTING TARANTINO’S BILL

Recent rumours have suggested that there’s more to Uma’s relationship with maverick director Quentin Tarantino than just friendship, but both deny it.

They met when Tarantino chose Uma for the role of Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction, the big-time thug’s wife with a big-time coke habit who gets babysat by John Travolta.

“I knew the character backward and forward, but I had no idea what she looked like,” Tarantino says. “Every actress from Isabella Rossellini to Holly Hunter and Meg Ryan read for that part.”

QT knew Thurman was his girl when, “I had dinner with another actress and felt like I was cheating on Uma”.

The pair came up with the idea for Kill Bill on the set of Pulp Fiction, but when he was set to start shooting, Thurman discovered she was pregnant. Rather than replace her, he delayed the film until she was ready to take the part. And several million film fans offered their thanks.

LIVING THE HIGH LIFE

A busy movie star has to have time to relax and Uma just loves her holidays. This winter she was spotted adjusting her bikini bottoms in St Barts, an exclusive Caribbean hideaway. Villas on the island cost £5,600 a week at Christmas and the place has become increasingly popular with Hollywood royalty. Tom Hanks, Gwyneth Paltrow and Arnold Schwarzenegger are all frequent visitors there.

Uma was captured in the arms of hotel tycoon Andre Balzas, who is helping her mend her post-Hawke broken heart. Andre is bound to be familiar with another of Uma’s favourite boltholes, the exclusive Hotel Cipriani in Venice.

Family summers used to be spent in the East Hamptons, but perhaps when her divorce comes through Uma will return to an old haunt from her younger days, Cannes.