Uma Thurman

Uma Karuna Thurman was born on April 29, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Robert Thurman, is an author and professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies who spent three years as an ordained Buddhist monk. Her mother, Nena von Schlebrügge, was a high-fashion model born in Mexico City to a German nobleman and a Swedish model named Birgit Holmquist. Thurman was raised with a Buddhist upbringing and spent approximately two years in Almora, Uttarakhand, India. She grew up primarily in Amherst, Massachusetts, attending Amherst Regional Junior High School before relocating to Woodstock, New York. She has three brothers — Ganden, born in 1967; Dechen Karl, born in 1973; and Mipam, born in 1978 — as well as a half-sister named Taya, born in 1961 from her father's previous marriage. Her first cousin once removed is Swedish soccer player Max von Schlebrügge.

As a child, Thurman attended Amherst Public Schools, where she discovered a passion for acting in eighth grade. At fourteen, she enrolled at Northfield Mount Hermon School, a preparatory school in Massachusetts, where talent scouts observed her portrayal of Abigail in a production of The Crucible and offered her the opportunity to act professionally. She left school to pursue that career. Before transitioning to acting, Thurman worked as a fashion model beginning at age fifteen, signing with the agency Click Models. Her early modeling work included appearances in Glamour and on the covers of British Vogue in December 1985 and May 1986.

Thurman made her film debut in the 1987 teen thriller Kiss Daddy Goodnight. The following year she appeared in three films: the comedy Johnny Be Good, in which she played the girlfriend of a high school quarterback prospect; The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, in which she made a brief appearance as the goddess Venus; and Dangerous Liaisons, an Oscar-winning drama co-starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich, in which she played a naive teenager seduced by a manipulative man. In 1990, she appeared alongside Fred Ward and Maria de Medeiros in Henry & June, a drama about the relationship between writer Henry Miller and his wife June in 1931 Paris. The film was the first to receive an NC-17 rating. She subsequently appeared in Final Analysis (1992) opposite Richard Gere and Kim Basinger, and in Jennifer 8 (1992) with Andy García. In 1993, she starred opposite Robert De Niro and Bill Murray in Mad Dog and Glory and appeared in Gus Van Sant's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

Thurman rose to international prominence through her collaboration with director Quentin Tarantino. In his 1994 neo-noir black comedy Pulp Fiction, she portrayed Mia Wallace, the wife of a Los Angeles mobster. The film grossed $213.9 million worldwide and earned Thurman nominations for both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe Award in the same category. She reunited with Tarantino to play the Bride in Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2, released in 2003 and 2004 respectively, earning an additional BAFTA Award nomination and two further Golden Globe Award nominations for those performances. Tarantino stated in a 2003 interview with Time magazine that he considers Thurman his muse and placed her "up there with Garbo and Dietrich in goddess territory."

Her additional film credits span multiple decades and genres, including The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), Batman & Robin (1997), Gattaca (1997), Les Misérables (1998), 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). On television, Thurman won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Film for her performance in the HBO film Hysterical Blindness (2002). She received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her appearance in the NBC series Smash in 2012. Her television series credits include The Slap (2015), Imposters (2017–2018), Chambers (2019), Super Pumped (2022), and Dexter: Resurrection (2025–present).

Thurman made her Broadway debut in The Parisian Woman, which ran from 2017 into 2018. Across her career in film, television, and theater, her accolades include a Golden Globe Award win, an Academy Award nomination, two BAFTA Award nominations, a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.