Uma Thurman

From modelling to film

Uma Thurman was born on 29 April 1970 in Boston. She started modelling at 15 with Click Models and landed two British Vogue covers in 1985 and 1986. Her first film, Kiss Daddy Goodnight, came out in 1987. The next year she worked for Terry Gilliam (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, as Venus) and for Stephen Frears, who cast her as Cécile de Volanges in Dangerous Liaisons. Philip Kaufman then picked her to play June Miller in Henry & June (1990), followed by Robin Hood (1991), Jennifer 8 and Mad Dog and Glory opposite Robert De Niro.

Mia Wallace and Tarantino

In 1994 Quentin Tarantino cast her as Mia Wallace, the gangster's wife in Pulp Fiction. The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress. Very different parts followed: Irene Cassini in Gattaca (1997), Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin (1997), Emma Peel in The Avengers (1998), a spy who fights hand to hand, and Fantine in Bille August's Les Misérables (1998).

Kill Bill was born on the Pulp Fiction set. Tarantino and Thurman came up with a hired killer left for dead on her wedding day. The credits attribute the Bride to "Q & U", their two initials.

Kill Bill: three months of training

The two volumes took nine months to shoot, across five countries. To prepare, Thurman spent three months training in martial arts, Japanese swordsmanship and the Japanese language. The fights were choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping, of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and his Hong Kong team. The Bride wears the black-striped yellow jumpsuit Bruce Lee wore in Game of Death, and her katana comes from the forge of Hattori Hanzo, played by Sonny Chiba.

In Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), the House of Blue Leaves sequence, where the Bride takes on O-Ren Ishii's (Lucy Liu) Crazy 88 alone, took eight weeks to film. Gordon Liu, star of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, plays Johnny Mo, the gang's leader. In Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) he returns as Pai Mei, the old master who trains Beatrix without mercy, as he trained Bill and Elle Driver before her. Volume 1 grossed $180.9 million worldwide on a $30 million budget.

The two films earned her two Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress in a Drama, a BAFTA nomination and two MTV Movie Awards for Best Fight. Her stunt double, New Zealander Zoë Bell, is one of the subjects of the documentary Double Dare (2004), in which Thurman appears.

After Kill Bill

Her later work mixes comedy (The Producers, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, where she plays a superhero), auteur cinema (Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac and The House That Jack Built) and mainstream films such as Percy Jackson, where she is Medusa. In 2023 she played the US president in Red, White & Royal Blue and co-starred in The Kill Room with Samuel L. Jackson, her Pulp Fiction partner.

Action found her again. In The Old Guard 2 (2025, Netflix) she is Discord, the first of the immortals, opposite Charlize Theron. In Pretty Lethal (2026, Prime Video), directed by Vicky Jewson, she plays Devora Kasimer, a former prima ballerina who runs a remote inn where a troupe of young dancers must fight to survive. In 2019 the David di Donatello awards gave her an honorary prize for her career.