Film actress; born in Boston, Massachusetts.
Named for a Hindu deity, Uma made her film debut in Kiss Daddy Goodnight
(1987), a low budget thriller. Her first well-known role was as Venus in
Terry Gilliams’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). Wearing only
hair extensions in
her brief performance as the Roman goddess of love, the alluring young
actress went on to take a number of sexually charged roles over the next
few years. At age eighteen, she bared all in Dangerous Liasons (1988),
a big-budget period piece starring John Malkovich and Glenn Close, and
in 1989 starred in Henry and June, the first film to be released with an
NC-17 (No Children Under 17) rating. In 1990, she married British actor
Gary Oldman, but they divorced in 1992. After appearing in a number of
marginally successful Hollywood movies, she stepped off the beaten track
to appear in Pulp Fiction (1994), the second movie by acclaimed independent
director Quentin Tarantino. For her nuanced performance as a glamorous
underworld moll, she was nominated with a Best Supporting Actress Academy
Award. In recent years, she has starred in Gattaca (1997), Batman and Robin
(1997), Les Miserables (1998), and The Avengers (1998). In 1998, she married
Gattaca co-star Ethan Hawke, and in the same year they welcomed their first
child, Maya Ray Thurman-Hawke, a daughter. |
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