If it weren't for Quentin Tarantino, Uma Thurman may not have a career. While she showed a great deal of promise in her early years convincingly playing the gamut from sweet and innocent to cold and calculating, the only roles that have really stuck with audiences have been her Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction and The Bride from the Kill Bill movies. In those movies, she gave audiences iconic performances that she'll mostly be remembered for. Yet, after every one of those successes, she mismanaged the career lift each brought, quickly sinking her A-list status each time.
Her exotic looks got her started in modeling at age 15. That soon led to a film career, where she started batting movies out one after another, including a high school comedy and a thriller featuring her as Lolita-type robber (you rob her virginity and she robs her pocketbook, I guess). She also won small roles in Oscar-nominated projects like Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons (she shares a birthday with her costar Michelle Pfeiffer). She also scored central roles with directors such as Philip Kaufman and John Boorman. Some of Thurman's scenes in Kaufman's Henry & June were reasons why it was one of the first films to be rated NC-17.
It wasn't until Tarantino came along and cast her in Pulp Fiction did she get an Oscar nomination and a second wind in her sails. The black bob that rested atop of the crown of her groovy and adventurous Mia made audiences finally notice her. One of her biggest box-office successes which followed, The Truth About Cats & Dogs, mostly relied on the acerbic charm of Janeane Garofalo who was a much bigger deal in the mid-90s thanks to her star-making turn in Reality Bites. 
Unfortunately, all of her stabs at prestige projects wouldn't pan out. A Month by the Lake, Les Miserables, Vatel, Merchant/Ivory's The Golden Bowl and her work with Woody Allen in Sweet and Lowdown wouldn't raise as much as a blip for her. Hot off her impressive work in the two Kill Bill films, she tried to continue her momentum with reuniting with Pulp Fiction costar John Travolta in Be Cool. She starred opposite Meryl Streep as the older woman in a romance with her shrink's son in Prime and took a singing role in the ill-received film adaptation of the popular musical The Producers. She couldn't extend the good-will she received from Kill Bill beyond two years. Her next four films were either huge failures and/or went straight to DVD: Super Ex, The Accidental Husband, The Life Before Her Eyes, and Motherhood.
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| Mia Wallace: "I'm going to go to the bathroom and powder my nose." |
Tomorrow, Thurman turns 42. This Summer, she will be appearing opposite Twilight sensation Robert Pattinson in Bel Ami, as well as a nominal role (I don't recall her being in the trailer) in Oliver Stone's Savages. At the end of this year, she'll star alongside chauvinist swine Gerard Butler in Playing the Field. Possible future projects include a romance with Clive Owen, a nun saving soldier children in South Africa, and a feature based on the character of Eloise. She can currently be seen on that TV show about the making of a Marilyn Monroe musical.
[Picture via Amy Grindhouse]
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