Uma Thurman

Biography

Uma Karuna Thurman was born on April 29, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Robert Thurman, was a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies and an author who lived as an ordained Buddhist monk for three years. Her mother, Nena von Schlebrügge, a high-fashion model, was born in Mexico City to a German nobleman and Birgit Holmquist, a Swedish model. Thurman spent altogether around two years in Almora, Uttarakhand, India. She grew up mostly in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she went to Amherst Regional Junior High School, then moved to Woodstock, New York. She has three brothers, Ganden (born 1967), Dechen Karl (born 1973), and Mipam (born 1978), and a half-sister named Taya (born 1961), from her father's previous marriage. Thurman's first cousin once removed is Swedish soccer player Max von Schlebrügge. Thurman has dyslexia, and has been open about her struggles with the condition. She is described, in a 2004 biography, as having been an awkward and introverted girl who was teased for her appearance and unusual name (sometimes using the name "Uma Karen" instead of her birth name). When Thurman was ten years old, a friend's mother suggested a nose job. As a child, she suffered bouts of body dysmorphic disorder. She attended Amherst Public Schools, where in eighth grade she discovered her love of acting. At age 14, she attended Northfield Mount Hermon School, a preparatory school in Massachusetts, where talent scouts noticed her performance as Abigail in a production of The Crucible and offered her the chance to act professionally; she then dropped out to pursue an acting career. Thurman began her career as a fashion model at age 15, and signed with the agency Click Models. Her early modeling credits included Glamour and the December 1985 and May 1986 covers of British Vogue. She made the transition to acting with her film debut, the teen thriller Kiss Daddy Goodnight, which was released in 1987. Thurman was subsequently cast in three 1988 films — Johnny Be Good, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and most notably, Dangerous Liaisons. In the comedy Johnny Be Good, she played the girlfriend of a top high school quarterback prospect, and in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, she made a brief appearance as the goddess Venus; during her entrance she briefly appears nude, in an homage to Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. In 1990, Thurman appeared with Fred Ward and Maria de Medeiros in Henry & June, a sexually provocative drama about the relationship and affairs between writer Henry Miller and his wife June Miller in 1931 Paris. This film was the first to receive an NC-17 rating and partly because many American newspapers refused to advertise films with the new rating, it did not get wide release in the United States. However, it won Thurman good notices; The New York Times wrote: "Thurman, as the Brooklyn-accented June, takes a larger-than-life character and makes her even bigger, though the performance is often as curious as it is commanding." After playing Maid Marian in the 1991 British adventure film Robin Hood, Thurman began filming Dylan Thomas, a biopic on Welsh poet Dylan Thomas starring her then-husband Gary Oldman with herself as Caitlin Thomas, however the project was shut down shortly after filming began. Thurman went on to star as the patronizing girlfriend of Patrick Bateman in the 1991 dark comedy Batman & Robin. In 1994, Thurman rose to international prominence with her portrayal as Mia Wallace in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She reunited with the director to play The Bride in Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2 (2003–2004), which brought her a BAFTA Award nomination and two additional Golden Globe Award nominations. Thurman's other film credits include The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), Batman & Robin (1997), Gattaca (1997), Les Misérables (1998), Paycheck (2003), The Producers (2005), My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), Nymphomaniac (2013), The House That Jack Built (2018), Hollywood Stargirl (2022), and The Old Guard 2 (2025). She made her Broadway debut in The Parisian Woman (2017–2018). Thurman won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Film for her performance in the HBO film Hysterical Blindness (2002) and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for appearing in the NBC series Smash (2012). On television, she has starred in The Slap (2015), Imposters (2017–2018), Chambers (2019), Super Pumped (2022), and Dexter: Resurrection (2025–present).