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Actress Uma Thurman

Name: Uma Thurman
Born: 29 April 1970 (Age: 41)
Where: Boston, Massachusettes, USA
Height: 6'
Awards: Won 1 Golden Globe, Nominated for 1 Oscar and 2 BAFTAs

 

Actress Uma Thurman

It's been a strange trip for Uma Thurman. Hailing from a highly intellectual background, she might have expected to lead an academic life. Instead, much to her bewilderment and horror, she was seized upon by Hollywood and thrust into the limelight as the latest teen sex symbol - a status that betrayed both her past and her desired future. And so began a decade-long journey to prove herself to be more than just a pretty girl who struck lucky - a journey that would eventually bring wealth, awards and worldwide respect.

 

Actress Uma Thurman

That background was not simply intellectual, it was also hugely exotic. Her maternal grandmother, Brigit Holmquist, was a great Swedish beauty who, in 1930s Berlin, met and married the monocled Westphalian Baron Karl von Schlebrugge. After the baron had been briefly jailed by the Nazis for refusing to denounce his Jewish business partners, the couple would take off for Sweden, then Mexico and China. Such were Brigit's looks that a nude statue of her would be erected in the port town of Trelleborg, and her daughter Nena would also turn out a stunner. Spotted in a Stockholm playground by society photographer Norman Parkinson when she was just 16, she was taken to London to model for Vogue, then off to New York where she became a top fashionista. Caught up in the high-brow swinging set, she would find a father figure in psychedelic guru Timothy Leary and marry him in 1964.

 

Actress Uma Thurman

Meanwhile, Robert Thurman, son of New York stage actress Elizabeth Farrar, was on a pathway all his own. Coming from a well-to-do WASP family, he'd gone to Harvard to study the classics but, at 19, had married Houston oil heiress Christophe de Menil, 7 years his senior. It didn't last, and Robert took off with some mates to ride across India on motorbikes. It was here that his life would change radically, for he'd meet the Dalai Lama and, after a protracted period of study, would become the first American to be made a Tibetan monk. He would henceforth be known as Tenzin - even his children would call him that.

 

Actress Uma Thurman

 Back in the US, Thurman was invited to lecture at the Hitchcock estate in Millbrook, New York, where, at the time, Leary and his acolytes were enjoying a frenetic course of acid experimentation. It was here that Robert met Nena, already attempting to extricate herself from a poorly conceived marriage. In 1966, when her divorce came through, Robert would renounce his robes and the couple would wed. Children would come soon. First Ganden (later a computer whizz), then Uma, then Dechen (an actor and director) and finally Mipam. All the names were culled from Buddhist theology.

 

Actress Uma Thurman

 

Actress Uma Thurman

 

Actress Uma Thurman

 

Actress Uma Thurman

 

Actress Uma Thurman

 

Actress Uma Thurman