Empire (Australia) – January 2002

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In Person: Uma Thurman

By Helen Barlow

She prefers corsets to comedies, and is set to kick arse in Tarantino’s new movie. This mama’s got a brand new bag.

After the debacle of The Avengers in 1998, ethereal screen goddess Uma Thurman decided it was time to disappear for a while. She had finally found her soul mate, the philosophically inclined actor Ethan Hawke (whom she met on the set of Gattaca), and the pair wanted to start a family. But a three-year hiatus with her baby Maya proved to be enough of a break, as the acting bug was biting.

“I have a slightly schizophrenic life,” says Thurman, who captured the imagination of many cinemagoers with her Oscar-nominated turn in Pulp Fiction. “My husband puts a lot of pressure on me, so that if I feel I have to work, I have to be very passionate about the film, whereas before I used to love to try this and that. I’ve been working in movies since I was 16 (playing a teen vamp in Kiss Daddy Good Night in 1987]. I’ve grown up in them, and I feel I can go into this new chapter now, learning.”

Despite being considered for roles including the leads in Charlie’s Angels, America’s Sweethearts and The Others, Thurman had a different agenda. In search of a new maturity in her movies, she opted for the corset, first in the turgid French royal court period romp, Vatel (still unreleased in Australia) about a celebrity chef played by Gerard Depardieu, and then in James Ivory’s The Golden Bowl, set in Italy and England between 1903 and 1909, a movie about the cruel games that lovers play.

“After I had my daughter I did Sweet And Lowdown with Woody Allen, but it was not a big movie and I only worked 10 days. I felt like my life was beginning anew and I realised I wanted to go back to pure dramatic acting. I didn’t want to do comedies, or big Hollywood movies.”

Luckily The Golden Bowl, based on Henry James’s novel, proved a more satisfying bet. The film casts Thurman as the unlikable Charlotte Stant, a liberated woman in an intolerant society who weds a wealthy older man (Nick Nolte) in order to be close to her true love (Jeremy Northam).

“It’s a portrait of an aggressive woman,” says Thurman. “She wants her man and will stop at nothing. It’s a very dangerous love. I’m married now and I’m a mother and I love being able to play real women. It was the most challenging, complex role I’ve ever bad. She’s bad and she’s heartbroken, she’s good and she’s crazy – but not completely. It was a very sensitive part, and James Ivory was a wonderful director. I would work with him again in a minute.”

Since Thurman is now pregnant with her second child, she will not be working with anyone just yet. (However she has shot Chelsea Walls, Hawke’s directorial debut set in New York’s hipster Chelsea Hotel.) Her first film post-pregnancy will be Quenrin Taranrino’s Kill Bill, what Tarantino describes as “a balls-to-the- wall, violent revenge movie”, for which he has delayed the schedule to accommodate his friend’s family life.

“I love him, he’s a fabulous director. I’ve just rarely been so inspired,” says Thurman, who tumed down the lead in Brian De Palma’s similarly themed Femme Fatale to work with Tarantino.

When Hawke describes Tarantino’s mind as one that “operates a little bit differently than anyone else’s”, it is hard not to think similarly of his wife.

Raised as a Buddhist by a Swedish mother (a psychotherapist and former model) and an American father who lectures in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University, the actress is a mix of ditsy eccentric and mindful observer, bound to eventually explore her European roots in movies.

“My mother gave me a lot of her Swedish, European feeling and sense of separation from America,” says Thurman, who nevertheless calls New York home – where, she maintains, her life with her husband and baby is surprisingly normal. “We’re just regular people. It’s great when there are movies we believe in and stories we want to have told, but then we go home and schlepp the baby around and eat ice cream. We change diapers in Central Park. It has to be done. If someone’s gonna hide in the bushes, what are you gonna do?”