page_title: Uma Thurman
section_title: Established career and hiatus (1996–2001)
hierarchical_section_title: Uma Thurman / Career / Established career and hiatus (1996–2001)
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Uma Thurman sur le tapis rouge de Cannes en 2000 English: Uma Thurman in Cannes Red Carpet in 2000
context_page_description: Uma Karuna Thurman is an American actress and model. She has performed in a variety of films, from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action films. Following her appearances on the December 1985 and May 1986 covers of British Vogue, Thurman starred in Dangerous Liaisons. She rose to international prominence with her performance as Mia Wallace in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award, the BAFTA Award, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Often hailed as Tarantino's muse, she reunited with the director to play the main role in Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2, which brought her two additional Golden Globe Award nominations.
  Established as a leading Hollywood actress, her other notable films include Henry & June, The Truth About Cats & Dogs, Batman & Robin, Gattaca, Les Misérables, The Producers, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac and The House That Jack Built. In 2011, Thurman was a member of the jury for the main competition at the 64th Cannes Film Festival, and in 2017, she was named president of the 70th edition's "Un Certain Regard" jury.
context_section_description: Thurman's next films, the romantic dramedy Beautiful Girls, in which she played a fairly wise love interest, and the comedy The Truth About Cats & Dogs, in which she starred as a ditzy blonde model, were modest commercial successes amid a positive critical response upon their theatrical releases in 1996. In 1997, she starred opposite Ethan Hawke in Gattaca, a science fiction film set in a future society driven by eugenics where potential children are conceived through genetic manipulation. The film received critical praise and became successful on the home video market, despite lackluster box office receipts. The Los Angeles Times, however, wrote that Thurman was "as emotionally uninvolved as ever".
  Her next film role was that of supervillain Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin (1997). Budgeted at over US$125 million, the film grossed a modest US$238 million internationally and is often considered one of the worst films of all time. Thurman's performance, however, was largely highlighted upon the film's premiere; the Houston Chronicle remarked that "Thurman [...] sometimes seems to be doing Mae West by way of Jessica Rabbit", and a similar comparison was made by The New York Times: "[L]ike Mae West, she mixes true femininity with the winking womanliness of a drag queen". She obtained a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Best Sci-fi Actress and was also nominated for Favourite Movie Actress at the Kids' Choice Awards. In 1998, she starred as a British secret agent in The Avengers, another financial and critical flop; CNN described her as "so distanced you feel like you're watching her through the wrong end of a telescope".
  Thurman took on the role of Fantine in Les Misérables, the 1998 film version of Victor Hugo's novel of the same name, directed by Bille August. The film was considered an "intelligent, handsomely crafted adaptation" of the classic novel, according to Rotten Tomatoes, and on his review of the film, Roger Ebert expressed that "Thurman's performance is the best element" of the story. In 1999, she performed in theatre in an update of Molière's The Misanthrope at the Classic Stage Company, and portrayed a socialite in Woody Allen's romantic dramedy Sweet and Lowdown, opposite Sean Penn. Thurman was in a hiatus from acting at the time as she had her daughter in 1998, doing only a few small, low-budget projects after giving birth; she eventually turned down the role of Éowyn in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, which she considers "one of the worst decisions [she] ever made".
  Thurman headlined the period drama The Golden Bowl (2000), based on the 1904 novel of the same name by Henry James. In November 2000, she narrated the John Moran opera Book of the Dead (2nd Avenue) at The Public Theater. The historical drama Vatel (2000) saw Thurman play Anne de Montausier, the love interest of 17th-century French chef François Vatel, and in Richard Linklater's real-time drama Tape (2001), she starred as the former girlfriend of a drug dealer and volunteer firefighter (Ethan Hawke). She was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female for her part in Tape. Hawke directed her in Chelsea Walls (2001), a drama revolving a number of artists as they spend a single day in New York's famed bohemian home Chelsea Hotel.
caption: Uma Thurman at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "150", "Image YResolution": "150", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2017:07:19 00:09:48", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6874", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "396", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "410"}