Harpers Bazaar UK – July 2009

Last Update: July 27th, 2009 at 8:02 am

Uma and Arki. If you want to give a roomful of people whiplash, try walking into London’s Cipriani restaurant some evening and repeating those words. Uma and Arki… Immediately heads swivel. Waiters jostle for a glimpse. It may not yet have reached a ‘Charles and Diana during the engagement’ level of madness, but they’ve eclipsed Gwyneth and Chris and are more than filling the void left by Madonna dn Guy.

We are talking, of course, about Uma Thurman and Arpad ‘Arki’ Busson – London’s hottest couple and a match made in paparazzi heaven. For the past two, years, the world has watched with bated breath as the Hollywood goddes of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill and London’s most eligible tycoon/philanthropist have courted each other in grand jet-set style: sitting front-row at a Diane von Furstenberg fashion show, frolicking on a yacht in Sardinia, locking lips on a park bench and raising millions together for Busson’s children’s charity ARK. This June, they will be center-stage at ARK’s annual fundraiser – the hot-ticket event that, last year, raised 25 million in a single night, with the help of friends like Elton John and Tony Blair.

Uma-watching is becoming a favorite London pasttime-and it’s not just because we will be soon able to claim the star, when she marries Busson, as an icon of our own. There’s something else about her that makes her an endless source of fascination. It’s nto that she is a conventional beauty. The nose is too big – yet somehow the overall combination is splendid beyond description. ‘Her beauty depends on the angle you’re looking from’ director Terry Gilliam (who filmed a 17-year-old Uma in 1988 as Botticelli’s Venus in The Adventures of Baron MunChausen) has said. “From certain angles, it falls apart very quickly – you see the ugly duckling lingering; but from some angels, she appears the most stunning thing on the planet.”

It is this beauty that has won her countless ad campaigns – this August, she becomes the face of Givenchy’s new perfume, Le Secret. Certianly, Thurman radiates a remarkable allure during the Bazaar shoot on a Manhattan rooftop. Sheathed in silver silk, she glides over to Busson when he appears on-set, curling herself around him like a cat; he grins like a schoolboy. The pair then pose together cheerfully for a few minutes – Busson covered in red lipstick kisses.

The 46-year–old tycoon (who has previously involved with Elle Macpherson, with whom he has 2 children) made his romance with Thurman official last summer with an ice-cube-size engagement ring and a party at his Chelsea mansion. A year on, their wedding plans remain a mystery. For months now, the tabloids have reported that the couple have secrelty married (with rumours reaching fever pitch while they were in the Bahamas the weekend before this interview). But when I ask her about this over lunch, she smiles and says only: ‘I’m not married, no. I am engaged, yes.’ We are sitting at the chef’s table in New York eatery Patroon and the willowy, six-foot-tall Thurman is glowing; she’s clearly not the kind of woman who finds being engaged stressful. Dressed in baggy cuffed jeans, espadrilles, Indian diamons and a cashmere blazer, her dishevelled hair framing her astonishing Cubist face, she looks not so much like a movie star as a mysterious bohemian aristocrat just back from sailing around the Greek Islands. A black dress becomes something else entirely on her-both drop-dead chic and supremely effortless; part of a mythical life. Of her forthcoming wedding, she smiles and says airily: “Isnt life amazing? Isnt life full of surprise? When it comes to things like marriage, you just never know… I find that growing up has been all about realising that life gets more serious, and that it’s also really important to increase your sense of humour…” This sort of gauzy non-answer, it turns out, is typical Thurman-speak. For all her obvious intelligence, she is impossibly vague in conversation – so much so that, after a while, it all begins to seem like a brilliant defence strategy to keep her from revealing the intimitate details of her life.

When I ask her to be more specific about the marriage and the seriousness of life and the need for a sense of humour, she waves a long golden hand and says ‘Oh you know.. ‘ Beaming up at our waiter, she orders oysters and Little Neck clams; when they arrive, she swoons with pleasure. ‘These are the greatest things I’ve ever tasted in my life!’ she says. The fact taht she once emerged from a gigantic clamshell (as the aforementioned Venus) wearing only her long golden tresses is lost on no one. Very quickly, more shellfish arrive.

It’s almost eerie how mesmerising she is at nearly 40. Her golden skin looks free of Botox. Her lips are succulent as a plum. Her eyes are set almost on either side of her head, like a sexy goldfish. She isnt just beautiful; shes ungraspable. There’s something about her that you can’t quite put your finger on, which makes it hard to stop looking at her. This is what Quentin Tarantino meant when he said: ‘She’s up there with Garbo and Dietrich in goddess territory.’ And it’s one of the reasons that Thurman has dodged the slings and arrows of the box office. Despite a career that has meandered through a range of genres – from costume drams (remember her gasping, white-breasted virgin in Dangerous Liaisons) to romantic comedies, Tarantino’s action rhapsodies and, more recently, serious dramas like The Life Before Her Eyes (about a woman haunted by a highschool shooting) – Thurman’s reviews are almost unfailingly terrific.

In some ways, her mercurial career seems to be a product of a singular childhood. Her ather, Robert, is an eminent Buddhist scholar. Her mother, Nena von Schlebrugge, is a Swedish-born model turned psychoanalyst, whose own father was a baron with a monocle, and whos first husband was pioneering LSD advocate Timothy Leary. Uma (which means ‘the middle way’ in Tibetan and ‘mother goddess’ in Hindu) and her 3 brothers grew up between Amherst, Massachusetts and hippie idyll Woodstock, NY. The Dalai Lama was a regular guest, as was Richard Gere. Twice during her childhood, the family upped sticks to India for a year.

A ‘gawky’ child, she was teased at school for her height and big feet, and found solace in acting. At 15, she convinced her parents to let her go to New York to pursue a career. Asked if acting was a way of rebelling against her hyper-intellectual family, Thurman -who is not a Buddhist, and describes herself as ‘open-minded, my brains have fallen out’ – has said: ‘My family is completely disconnected from entertainment; [acting] was unexplored territory, a place in which I found some strength and some confidence.’ But for all her efforts to set herself apart from her family, she will acknowledge the influence of Buddhism – with its central goal of selflessness, or a lack of attachment to any kind of fixed identity – on her life. ‘I’ve tried not to be pigeonholed’, she says. ‘I’ve made very schizophrenic career choices, and as a result have blocked myself having a sort of direct, kind of cachet, stardom. I havent gotten to corner a market, but instead I’ve gotten to be in every corner.’

Nothing testifies to this better than Thurman’s current schedule. In June she’ll play Medusa in Chris Columbus’ big-budget family film Percy Jackson; after that, there’s a play she’s thinking about in New York. Then there’s a drama set in Africa (though she will say no more than that). Do she and Tarantino have any plans to work together again? ‘ Quentin and I.. of course we’d work together,’ she says. ‘We’re in communication. We had a big blow-out, a big battle, but we got over it.’ I ask if she minded not being included in Tarantino’s upcoming flick Inglourious Basterds: ‘Um.. I didnt mind, no. I mean, I think the movie is mainly about men, so barring a sex change.. ‘ she laughs. ‘ I know there’s a role for a girl in it, but it wasn’t for me. If it had been, I probably would have done it.’

But Thurman doesnt seem overly concerned about her status as a film star these days. Indeed, she seems happier and calmer than ever; the past few years have not been easy. She and second husband Ethan Hawke split up in 2003 (her first husband was Gary Oldman, who she married at 19 and divorced after 18 months); they now share custody of their children (Maya, 11 and Levon, 7). A three-year relationship with hotelier, Andre Balazs ended in 2007 and in 2008, she had to testify in court against a mentally ill stalker who’d been terrorising her for years. Then, this spring, Natasha Richardson, one of her closest friends, died in a skiing accident.

The tragedy is still raw. When, earlier, I asked Thurman about her favourite places in London, she was completely at a loss, saing: ‘ I wish I was like a friend of mine who would always find the best thigns, and would always know where to go.’ She tells me now, sadly: ‘I was talking about Natasha. She’d have a plan on arrival anywhere, and would be carving the best out of life and every situation and every person. She wasn’t as much a passenger as I am, which made us great companions in life.. because every driver needs a passenger… and every passenger needs a driver. So it’s a big loss in my life.’

Thurman has Busson by her side, however one has to look at pictures of him shielding her from the paparazzi at Richardson’s funeral to see that he has a deeply calming influence on her. As for where the couple will settle, Thurman says they will most likely continue to spend two weeks of the month in NY and two in London. ‘ I love it in London in one weekend than I do in maybe 10 years in NY. It’s a place where not only do people seem funnier and more entertaining to you, but you seem funnier and more entertaining to yourself.’

Rumours have been flying about Thurman and Busson being on the market for a country pile in the English countryside, but she will only confirm that she’s a complete real-estate addict. ‘I would buy a country house in virtually every country in the world if I could. I also want a country house in Italy, France, Switzerland; I have aspiratiosn in Mexico.. virtually all coastal regions,’ she says with a laugh. ‘I just have this constant curiousity to pen a clam in every country and eat the squirming things from every shore.’

Life Before Her Eyes is out on DVD on 10 August.