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Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970) is an Oscar-nominated American film
actress. She performs predominantly in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging
from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action thrillers. She is
best known for her films directed by Quentin Tarantino. Her most popular films
include Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Pulp Fiction (1994), Gattaca (1997) and the two
Kill Bill movies (2003–04). She is currently the "face" of Virgin Media in the
United Kingdom.
Thurman was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother, Nena Birgitte Caroline von
Schlebrügge (b. 1941), was a fashion model who was born in Mexico City, Mexico to
German nobleman Friedrich Karl Johannes von Schlebrügge and Brigit Holmquist, who
was from Stockholm, Sweden. Thurman's father, Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman, was
born in New York City to Elizabeth Dean Farrar, a Scots-Irish American and a stage
actress, and Beverly Reid Thurman, Jr., (of English and Dutch descent) an
Associated Press editor and U.N. translator. Thurman's mother was briefly married
in 1964 to LSD guru Timothy Leary after the two were introduced by Salvador Dalí;
she married Thurman's father in 1967.
Thurman's father, a recognized scholar and professor at Columbia University of
Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies, was the first westerner to become a Tibetan Buddhist
monk. He gave his children a Buddhist upbringing: Uma is named after an Uma Chenpo
(in Tibetan; Mahamadhyamaka in Sanskrit, meaning “Great Middle Way”). She has three
brothers, Ganden (b. 1971), Dechen (b. 1973) and Mipam (b. 1978), and a half-sister
named Taya (b. 1960) from her father's previous marriage. She and her siblings
spent extended amounts of time in Almora, India as children, and the Dalai Lama
would sometimes visit their home.
Since Professor Thurman moved between various universities, the family often
relocated when Uma was a child. She grew up mostly in Amherst, Massachusetts and
Woodstock, New York. Thurman is described as having been an awkward and introverted
young girl who was frequently teased as a child for her large frame, unique angular
bone structure, unusual name (sometimes using the name “Uma Karen” instead of her
birth-name), and size 11 feet (Thurman's famously large feet would later be
lovingly filmed by Quentin Tarantino in the films he made with her). Even friends
made a point of highlighting her unusual features -- when she was ten years old, a
friend's mother suggested she receive a nose job.
Although these unique physical attributes would later make her beauty iconic, these
childhood attentions may have led to her bouts with body dysmorphic disorder, a
syndrome involving a disturbed body image, which she discussed in an interview with
Talk magazine in 2001.
Thurman attended Northfield Mount Hermon, a college preparatory boarding school in
Northfield, Massachusetts, where she received her first acting experiences in
school plays. She was unathletic and earned average grades in school, but excelled
in acting from a young age. It was after performing in a production of The Crucible
that she was noticed by talent scouts, and was persuaded to act professionally.
Thurman left her high school to pursue an acting career in New York City and to
attend the Professional Children's School where she dropped out before
graduating.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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