Actress Thurman Radiates A European Sensibility

TREMEZZO, Italy - At the age of 24, Uma Thurman has an enviable acting career. She has played a wide range of roles and has been noticed for all the right reasons - for her versatility and skill as an actress.

Sure, she was on the cover of Rolling Stone's 1989 Hot Issue, and Mademoiselle magazine once called her "a thinking man's sex symbol," but Thurman herself has done nothing to pursue such hype. Yes, she did appear in some steamy bedroom scenes in playing the bisexual wife of novelist Henry Miller in "Henry and June"; but, hey, that was an art-house film, so it was all for a higher purpose.

Truth is, Thurman's work hasn't been dogged either by scandal or controversy in the eight years she has been acting.

Until now, that is.

She plays Mia, a gangster's wife, in "Pulp Fiction," the Quentin Tarantino film. It is fair to say that one particular sequence involving Thurman is destined for infamy.

Mia is escorted on an evening's date by John Travolta, a sidekick of her violent husband, who is out of town. In a retro '50s restaurant they dance charmingly together; she flirts with him. He frets because his boss is jealous; the last man she tried to seduce ended up dead at his hands.

Back at her place she snorts what she thinks is cocaine but is really a deadly heroin cocktail, and lapses into a coma. Fearing for his life, Travolta carries her to his car and takes her to the home of his drug dealer. The two devise a way to save her life, in a jarring, hilarious and unforgettable scene.

"I wondered about doing it at first because the script was so shocking," Thurman says now. "I haven't made a habit of doing films with a lot of violence, and from what was on the page it was hard to tell, because in anyone else's hands it could become a sick movie.

"But I let Quentin talk me into it, and I believe in him. It was a matter of finding out what was in his heart, and what was in it was good, nothing malicious or full of hatred or exploitative. He has a pure, wild, crazy sense of humor, and a passion for filmmaking. And the film's funny. Horrifyingly funny, perhaps, but still funny."

Dancing with Travolta

She also enjoyed work with Travolta. "That dance scene was so camp, I couldn't pass it up. To dance with Travolta was like being able to do a Western with John Wayne; you'd happily play some barroom slut just for the opportunity."

She relates all this sitting on a hotel terrace overlooking Lake Como, a place of tranquil beauty where she is making a very different sort of film. In "A Month by the Lake," directed by John Irvin, and based on an H.E. Bates novella, Edward Fox plays a middle-age English major vacationing in the late 1930s at an Italian lakeside hotel who becomes infatuated with the young American nanny played by Thurman.

She toys with his affections, then becomes swiftly and openly bored; this sends him on the rebound toward an English woman of his own age, played by Vanessa Redgrave.

Unlike many American women of her generation, Thurman does not say the word "like" every few seconds; she speaks coolly in complete paragraphs, rounding off her thoughts precisely.

"My father still wants me to become an academic," she says. "But not having had a formal clear road in my education, not having gone to college, my interests are as varied as my reading list. I love literature, so I'd probably have gone charging off into English studies."

Bohemian background

She is from a liberal, academic, Bohemian background. Her father is an expert in Tibetan studies. Her Swedish-German mother, once married to Timothy Leary, is now a psychotherapist. Her name, Uma, is a Hindu word meaning "bestower of blessings." At age 15 she persuaded them to let her drop out of boarding school and try acting.

She moved to New York and precociously set up house in Hell's Kitchen, where junkies, muggers and hookers stalk street corners; the experience has clearly given her a sophisticated edge. The gamble worked: In New York she landed roles in two low-budget films, "Kiss Daddy Goodnight" and "Johnny Be Good," and her career began.

Thurman radiates an almost European sensibility on screen and explains that her mother insisted her children should not think of themselves as American, even though they spent most of her childhood in New England college towns.

"I've been presented to the world through European films," she says. "I've worked so much with European directors: Terry Gilliam, Stephen Frears, John Irvin, John Boorman. `Henry and June' was about a European woman. And in general I have a taste for European films."

In 1991, Thurman married British actor Gary Oldman. But the marriage ended after 18 months amid speculation that Oldman's volatile personality had wrecked the union.

Redgrave says of Thurman: "She's special, a fantastically good actress as well as being very beautiful. She has a marvelously individual sense of character and comedy." John Irvin adds: "She has an idiosyncratic way of finding a character - there's a wildness about her.

"The joy of Uma is she's never dull, predictable or safe."