95It was 1980 and, despite being only ten years old,
UmaThurman was already anxiousaboutthe
way she looked.At school, she was bullied for
several years about her height, large feet and
hands, and wide-set eyes. So, when a model friend
of her mother’s suggested she should have a nose
job, her insecurities deepened. ‘I was sure that my
looks were hideous,’ Thurman later said. ‘I was a
little too tall, odd, funny looking.’ However, a mere
eight years later, she was being feted as one of
Hollywood’s most beautiful new stars after her
breakthrough role in The Adventures Of Baron
Munchausen. Being considered attractive and
talented was quite the validation for a young
woman shunned by her classmates.
Thurman has now become one of the most
recognised faces in the entertainment industry,
and this month marks 25 years since she shimmied
her way to icon status in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic
Pulp Fiction. Her performance as mobster’s wife Mia Wallace
earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress
and a lifelong role as Tarantino’s muse. But there was also a
darkside to her dazzling cinematic pairing with Tarantino –
beingsexually assaulted by his producer and collaborator,
Harvey Weinstein. Now, as Weinstein prepares to stand trial
for offences against numerous women, Thurman considers
herself ‘extremely fortunate’ to have found the courage to
expose him. ‘[It’s] having the courage to just try to move
forward, try to take another step, and try not to let things
overcomeme – to be brave,’ she said earlier this year.
BornUma Karuna Thurman on 29 April 1970 in Boston,
Massachusetts,her father, Robert, is one of America’s leading
scholars on Buddhism, and her mother, Nena, a former
catwalk model, retrained as a psychotherapist and now runs a
mountain retreat. The year she turned 14, Thurman spent
the summer in New York taking acting classes. When she
returned to school, she played Abigail in a production ofThe
Crucibleand some talent agents from New York, who’d come
to watch her perform, offered to pay for further lessons.
Emboldened, Thurman moved to the city, where she enrolled
at the Professional Children’s School and signed up with Click
Models to earn money to pay her rent.
In 1988, aged just 18, she got her big break in Terry
Gilliam’s oddball comedy The Adventures Of Baron
Munchausen. Her character, Venus, which required her to
appear as though naked while standing in a seashell, caused
astir – but it was nothing compared to the reaction she
received for her next film,Dangerous Liaisons. Set in pre-
Revolution Paris, Thurman played Cécile de Volanges,
a bride-to-be attacked in her bedchamber by John
Malkovich’s rakish Viscount Valmont. Thurman’s breastsClockwisefrom top left: the actress’s school
yearbookphoto from 1996; with Gary Oldman
whoshe married in 1990; Thurman and
second husband Ethan Hawke; starring in
Dangerous Liaisonswith John Malkovich
Far left: at a London film premiere in 2000Words by Michelle Davieswere exposed during the scene, causing a public furore.
‘That showing part of the human body would have such an
overwhelming effect and be the cause of such insane media
amazed me,’ she later said. ‘It was a shocking thing to
suddenly put up as some kind of hot thing.’ For the next
year, she took to wearing baggy clothing to hide her body
and backed away from acting. ‘I preferred not to work
if I was going to be pigeonholed as the sexual flavour of the
month,’ she later remarked. Malkovich in particular
became protective of her, describing her toRolling Stone
in 1989 as ‘a haunted girl’.
In 1990, aged 20, Thurman returned to work in another
period piece, the critically acclaimedHenry & June, and it
was on the set of that film that she met her first husband,
British actor Gary Oldman. Despite the age gap (Oldman was
32) and their obvious differences – she practised Buddhism,
he had a reputation for hard partying – the pair fell in love and
married that same year. Two years later it was over, though,
with Thurman commenting ‘it takes a special kind of
woman to put up with him’.
In 1993, she landed the coveted lead role in Gus Van Sant’s
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues.Then, a year later, she was cast
as Mia Wallace inPulp Fictionalongside John Travolta and
Samuel L Jackson. Costume designer Betsy Heimann put
together Mia’s look and, in doing so, created one of the most
iconic character images ever committed to celluloid. Her
inspiration for the character’s crisp white shirt and black
trousers wasReservoir Dogs, Tarantino’s previous hit film,Life storiesShe’s one of Hollywood’s biggest film stars,and this year celebrates 25 years since hermost iconic role inPulp Fiction. But she’s facednumerous personal battles and came out as one
of the Me Too movement’s most vocal victims