Times Online – July 25, 2009

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The second age of Uma Thurman

A hot, sultry night in Paris. In the baroque environs of a former bank, a grand gala dinner is about to get under way. The air is thick with scent, spiked with cigarette smoke and the whiff of self-tan. The assembled sip champagne and admire the vast U-shaped banqueting table, crystal and silver glittering in the candlelight. As the 300-odd guests sample the freshly prepared carb-free sushi (slivers of raw fish on vegetable slices), they discuss the matter at hand. Namely, Uma Thurman and Givenchy.

We are here to witness the launch of what is known in the fragrance world as a “flanker” – a new variation on an already existing line. Tonight they are launching Ange Ou Démon Le Secret, a development of Givenchy’s 2006 perfume, Ange Ou Démon. It’s intended as a lighter interpretation of the original, with a focus on the “angelic” notes. The choice of Thurman as its face is intriguing. Is this Givenchy wanting to be cool, or is Thurman looking to be ladylike? Or is it just a straightforward commercial partnership?

Everyone is wondering just how commercial. Estimates (all unconfirmed) vary wildly between 2 and 20 million. Dollars, euros or sterling, it’s unclear. No matter: anticipation is high. This is a big night for the house of Givenchy, the moment when its newest venture will be assessed by the world’s press. The outcome of this evening will, in part, help to influence Le Secret’s success in the wider world. Question is: what, if anything, does it all mean to Thurman?

Cut to lunchtime the following day, and the person at the centre of the excitement is curled up on a sofa in a suite at the Ritz, nursing a box of tissues (a cold, combined with jet lag). It’s a look or two away from the soignée creature who made her grand entrance the night before. That Thurman was most definitely “on”, from the black couture dress (Givenchy, naturally) to the Grecian-inspired updo (still in place, albeit a little fuzzy around the edges) to the special movie-star voice, all breathy and coquettish.

This morning-after version of Thurman is, by contrast, low-key, the epitome of the star at rest. Still beautiful in an otherworldly sort of a way (I feel like the dwarf Gimli being introduced to a radiant Galadriel), she is dressed down, her make-up so natural as to be almost imperceptible. She is polite and friendly, a far more mature – and more thoughtful – subject than you might have presumed.

She is also more than a little businesslike: there is a distinct no-fly zone in the air around Thurman, and woe betide the fool who crosses into it – as do I when, shortly into our meeting, I broach the subject of her fiancé, the financier and philanthropist Arpad “Arki” Busson. The pair became engaged last year, he having split four years ago from his long-term partner (and mother of their two children) Elle Macpherson, she also having emerged from a partnership with the New York hotelier André Balazs and from earlier divorces from the father of her two children, Ethan Hawke, and the British actor Gary Oldman.

Noting Busson’s presence at the dinner the night before, I wondered how he felt about this new juncture in her career. “I have no idea, you would be better off asking him that question,” comes her response, quick and uncompromising. Still polite, of course, but sounding a clear note of warning.

Despite the obvious difficulties of being one half of such a power couple (negotiating two busy schedules and two sets of stepchildren across several continents will be, if nothing else, logistically fraught), Thurman’s reluctance to elaborate about her fiancé is probably a good sign. Both are at the end of long and bumpy emotional roads, and for this relationship to succeed they must settle into a mature, grown-up pattern. For someone as famous as Thurman, having a truly private relationship is an invaluable asset; wanting to keep it that way is a sign that you’re serious about it.

Besides, this is no mindless celebrity coupling. Busson’s charity ARK (Absolute Return for Kids), founded in 2002 to raise money for disadvantaged children, has grown into a significant global force, raising phenomenal sums of money for projects ranging from educational programmes in the UK to fighting HIV and Aids in Africa. For her part, Thurman has been involved in the American charity Room To Grow (helping disadvantaged children in the first three years of their life) since its inception in 1998. “We don’t like how unfair the world is,” she says, “and we do our bit. And I could do a lot more. Until you have to walk across the desert with a child in a pot on your back, you really are living with choice and you have to be grateful for that.”

On the subject of Givenchy, Thurman is effusive. She seems less interested in the olfactory qualities of the scent itself (a fruity floral), focusing instead on the merits of working with LVMH (Givenchy’s parent company). She talks about its “beautiful conduct”, and its “high standards”. She repeats the story, first recounted on stage the night before, about watching the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s as a young girl, about falling “madly in love with it, with Holly Golightly, the tragedy and the bittersweetness of it and the extraordinary humanity that she brought to elegance”, and references the relationship between Hubert de Givenchy (now in his eighties) and Audrey Hepburn, for whom, so legend has it, he created L’Interdit.

It is odd to hear this woman, the edgy, dark-hearted minx of such legendary films as Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill, using such fine corporate language, but then again, it would be naive to assume that her film roles – or, for that matter, her commercial partnerships – in any way reflect the person she really is. The real Thurman is far more elusive than that.

Cast into the public eye precociously early (she was just 18 at the time of her seduction at the hands of a memorably lascivious John Malkovich in Stephen Frears’s 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons), Thurman’s life, private and public, has not been straightforward.

The daughter of unconventional parents (her father is a Buddhist academic, her mother a Dutch model turned psychotherapist), she grew up with “a different imprinting to many American children”. She travelled a lot because of her father’s work, and sometimes found it hard to fit in. “I often had little maladies when I was going to school,” she says. “Perhaps it was anxiety, but I used to spend time at home, sick, and I just used to watch old movies.

“When I was younger, if you weren’t the girl next door you couldn’t get those really human parts. Even now it’s a bit challenging. It was frustrating to me. Not that I particularly minded playing the exotic – it lent me a career in Europe. I used to go to auditions in my teens in New York and they would say, ‘Boy, you do a good American accent!’ And I’d say, ‘Thanks, but I’m from Massachusetts.’ So it’s funny how that which seems to be your stumbling block can also be your starting block.”

This sense of an unorthodox creature struggling to fit in is at the core of Thurman’s appeal. It is that tension that makes her, aged 39 and as she considers the next phase of her life, so interesting. Will she continue in the same vein, choosing complex, ambiguous projects, or will she settle into a more conventional path, as mainstream leading lady, mother, wife of a wealthy philanthropist and the face of a prestigious French perfume?

Her next film, Motherhood, the story of one woman’s trials and tribulations as she attempts to organise a birthday party for her six-year-old daughter, would seem to indicate a shift towards the latter. So does she want to reinvent herself in a more conventional mould?

“Do I feel grown-up? No,” she says. “But I’m certainly getting kicked along in that direction. I haven’t chosen any other action films since Kill Bill because I felt that everything else just sort of paled by comparison. But we’ll see. I like to switch it up. I don’t like to get lulled into some hole that I can’t get out of. At the moment, though, I really would like to refocus on my career because, you know, I’m missing it.”

If reinvention is the name of the game, then now is the time to do it. Thurman’s children from her marriage to Hawke are just that bit older (7 and 11) and, by her own admission, she is emerging from the tunnel that all working mothers will recognise. “When my son turned 7, I sort of stood up straight,” she says. “And I suddenly realised I had been like this [makes expansive gesture of exhaustion], in one way or the other, for the past 10 years.”

“My big wish now,” she continues, “is to make a little time for myself. I think many women, working women, get this. I mean how do you justify that hour and a half to yourself? When you have this to do and that to do and you want to be there… So I really want to do that. I really think it’s necessary.

“That’s what Motherhood is about,” she continues. “The chaos and the confusion – and also the loss of yourself. Of course there is a good part to losing yourself – any mother that doesn’t give herself up isn’t a good mother, but at the same time you can get to a point where you can’t reach the identity that helped you be stable in the first place – and that is quite a frightening feeling. I must have gone through years of it. Just years of confusion. Guilty when you’re here and guilty when you’re there, of being torn in half.” She laughs. “Your happiness depends on where you measure in your sense of duty: what’s your shame level today? What have you forgotten, what did you do wrong, what could you do better?

“I’ll never forget. I went to see a doctor a few years ago and he said, ‘I’m going to write you a prescription,’ and I went OK, what’s he giving me a prescription for? And he wrote down on the pad: ‘Hotel: one night a week.’

I never did it. But the idea that the doctor prescribed me to take myself to a hotel alone, to take my books or whatever and curl up on my own… that’s unthinkable. What, where no one is going to open the door and ask me a question?”

Given her desire, then, to restart her career in earnest, fronting a campaign for Givenchy may well turn out to be a timely move. In the publicity material for Le Secret (the campaign was shot by Mario Testino) she presents a mainstream image of sexuality: big hair, provocative pose. There is no question that Thurman looks hot, a crucial attribute in an industry that tends to view women over the age of 35 as virtually invisible.

In reality, Thurman’s reputation as a style icon is based on something altogether quirkier – beautiful, yes, but on her own, effortlessly cool terms – which should serve her well as she hits her forties. She likes labels, from Prada to Zac Posen, and is often seen at the New York shows. Over the years her style has changed, growing from a look that’s sexy but a little kooky into something elegant, albeit still sharp. “I prefer comfortable, simple clothes. I don’t want to wear something that makes me feel tortured, overexposed or uptight,” she recently told a fashion magazine. “I try to find the perfect balance between being hemmed in by clothes and being set free by them.”

Up close, her face looks plausibly radiant. “The only thing that’s more ridiculous than the film industry’s obsession with eternal youth is trying to look ten years younger than yourself,” she says, pulling another tissue from the box. “I think it’s very good to look healthy. I feel very happy to look healthy – but I don’t want to live a tortured life of neurosis about it all.

“Besides, it’s a different kind of beauty, that of a young woman. There are girls who are beautiful in their youth who don’t grow into beautiful women – because youth alone has its appeal.” And being excessively pretty when young, as Thurman knows only too well, is not always the straightforward advantage one imagines it to be. “You know, it’s like: ‘You’re pretty, be quiet,’ she says, with considerable feeling. “Pretty girls get self-conscious because they’re constantly getting comments about how they look and they end up getting very shy or actually awkward. Even if they feel big about it – it sort of closes them down.”

And how does she feel about getting older herself? “I totally understand, in my line of work, if someone feels that they’re not going to be able to do the job they passionately love unless they, you know, cut their face,” she says. “I haven’t yet come to that sense of crisis. But I completely understand it – and I don’t judge it. But I do think it’s a pity, because I think women are so beautiful as they get older.”

Source: Times Online