Uma Karuna Thurman was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into a highly unorthodox and Eurocentric family. She is the daughter of Nena Thurman (née Birgitte Caroline von Schlebrügge), a fashion model and socialite who now runs a mountain retreat, and of Robert Thurman (Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman), a professor and academic who is one of the nation's foremost Buddhist scholars. Uma's mother was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to a German father and a Swedish mother (who herself was of Swedish, Danish, and German descent). Uma's father, a New Yorker, has English, Scots-Irish, Scottish, and German ancestry. Uma grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, where her father worked at Amherst College.

Thurman's household was one in which the The Dalai Lama was an occasional guest; she and her siblings all have names deriving from Buddhist mythology; and Middle American behavior was little understood, much less pursued. And so it was that the young Thurman confronted childhood with an odd name and eccentric home life -- and nature seemingly conspired against her as well. She is six feet tall, and from an early age towered over everyone else in class. Her famously large feet would soon sprout to size 11 -- and even beyond that -- and although they would eventually be lovingly filmed by director Quentin Tarantino, as a child she generally wore the biggest shoes in class, which only provided another subject of ridicule. Even her long nose moved one of her mother's friends to helpfully suggest rhinoplasty -- to the ten-year-old Thurman. To make matters worse yet, the family constantly relocated, making the gangly, socially inept Thurman perpetually the new kid in class. The result was an exceptionally awkward, self-conscious, lonely and alienated childhood.

French cosmetics firm Lancome have employed her as a spokesmodel for their company. [June 2000]
Daughter, with Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke born. [July 1998]
Ranked #99 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]
Former model.
Her father, Robert Thurman, is a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University School of Religion. He was the first westerner to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Uma was named for a Hindu goddess. Robert's family has been in the United States for many generations, and he has English, Scots-Irish (Northern Irish), Scottish, and German ancestry.
Uma's mother, Nena Thurman, who was born as Birgitte Caroline von Schlebrügge in Mexico City, Mexico, is a model-turned-psychotherapist, who was a young teenager when she was discovered in Stockholm by photographer Norman Parkinson. Uma's maternal grandfather, Friedrich Karl Johannes von Schlebrügge, was a Prussian nobleman. Uma's maternal grandmother, Brigit Holmquist, was born in Sweden, to a father of Swedish descent and a mother of German and Danish ancestry. Brigit's father was a famous local industrialist, and Brigit was herself a famous beauty. A nude statue, called 'Famntaget' (The Embrace), of Brigit, stands in the port town of Trelleborg. Uma's maternal grandparents moved to Mexico, where Nena was born. Artist Salvador Dalí introduced Nena to her first husband, Timothy Leary.

Tall, sandy blonde, with sort of blue eyes, skinny in places, fat in others. An average gal. - Uma Thurman, self description.
I'm very happy at home. I love to just hang out with my daughter, I love to work in my garden. I'm not a gaping hole of need.
It is better to have a relationship with someone who cheats on you than with someone who does not flush the toilet.
I was not particularly bright, I wasn't very athletic, I was a little too tall, odd, funny looking, I was just really weird as a kid.
Desperation is the perfume of the young actor. It's so satisfying to have gotten rid of it. If you keep smelling it, it can drive you crazy. In this business a lot of people go nuts, go eccentric, even end up dead from it. Not my plan.
My washing machine overwhelms me with its options and its sophistication.
"Everyone looked the same, everyone had it down to such a perfect T. You get bored. That's when you have to say, 'I will be worst-dressed.'", on her questionable choice of Oscar attire this year (2004)
I had to go to a mirror and look at it. I couldn't picture myself in my own head. I had no image beyond a stick figure. I wasn't a mean person as a kid, or dumb, and something has to be said to justify excluding you.
Before I had my child, I thought I knew all the boundaries of myself, that I understood the limits of my heart. It's extraordinary to have all those limits thrown out, to realize your love is inexhaustible.
I think we all exude essential truths about ourselves, and then, as an actress, there's what you do with it. There's your wit and your imagination, and what you can cook up from your experience and understanding of what makes a human being tick.
In show business, to pry open doors in new areas is really tough. Until you have a successful comedy, people don't think you could be funny, which is what makes a director like Quentin Tarantino so special. He sees beyond the things on the resume that you've done to date and opens up wonderful cans of worms for you to crawl into. That's a cool thing.