The Biography Channel - Uma Thurman Biography

The glacial beauty went from wide-eyed ingenue in Dangerous Liaisons to revenge-driven assassin in Kill Bill. Did her career renaissance as Tarantino's muse doom her marriage?

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Uma Thurman
born: 29-04-1970
birth place: Boston, USA

Uma Karuna Thurman was born into a highly unconventional family. Her mother, Nena, was the daughter of the renowned Swedish beauty, Brigit Holmquist, who’d married a German nobleman Baron Karl von Schlebruge in the 1930s.

Uma’s mother, Nena, grew up to be just as stunning as Brigit; she was talent-spotted in Stockholm by top British photographer Norman Parkinson when she was only 16, who brought her over to London where she began modelling for Vogue magazine.

As one of the top supermodels of her day, she soon began mixing with the high-flyers of swinging Sixties London, and in 1964 she married the controversial psychedelic guru Dr Timothy Leary, one of the trendiest intellectuals of his day. Leary was much older than Nena, so he was considered to be something of a father figure. Nena’s first marriage didn’t last, and soon afterwards she met and fell in love with Uma’s future father, Robert Thurman.

Robert Thurman’s background was just as unusual as Nena’s, though in an entirely different way. He was the son of New York stage actress Elizabeth Farrar, and had studied classics at Harvard. At 19, he’d married an oil heiress, but soon divorced and went off to ride a motorbike across India with his friends. In India, he met the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, converted to Buddhism, and became the first American to be ordained as a Tibetan monk! He adopted a Tibetan name - Tenzin - and even his own children still call him that to this day.

Uma’s parents met and married in 1966, and soon began a family. Most of her childhood was spent in Amherst, Massachussetts, or Woodstock, New York, where her father held various posts as a professor of religion. Uma is the second oldest child, and has three brothers: Ganden, who is now a computer expert; Dechen, who is an actor and director, and finally, Mipam, the baby of the family. All four children are named after Tibetan gods.

Growing up in such an unusual family, Uma felt herself to be something of a outsider, even from an early age. Uma’s parents disapproved of popular American culture, and discouraged her from joining in with normal high school pursuits and hobbies - Uma wasn’t exactly praised to the hilt when she joined the cheerleading squad. She attended several schools in quick succession and was frequently teased on account of her oddball name, and her even more oddball parents. To overcome this problem, Uma even took to calling herself Kelly or Linda, instead of Uma. Unsurprisingly she grew up into an angry and difficult teenager: it was then that she first got involved in acting, however, and she was instantly hooked. Right from her first school play, she fell in love with theatre, and soon asked for acting lessons. Aged 14, she was sent to Northfield Mount Hermon School, but she’d already decided that she was done with school and wanted to become an actress.

Uma dropped out of Northfield a year later and transferred to the Professional Children’s High School. With the help of her mother’s contacts, she signed up with various modelling agencies: she was taken on by Click, and soon began modelling for Glamour magazine, where she worked with many of the country’s top fashion photographers. But Uma’s big dream was to act in the movies. She was soon spotted by talent scouts while at drama school and landed a part in her first film, Kiss Daddy Goodnight, where she played the role of a young temptress who picks up older men.