Uma Thurman

Interview By: Steve Moreau
SteveMoreau@TheCinemaSource.com

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Uma Thurman is crazy. Not crazy like I am gonna eat human flesh crazy, but crazy like I want to get to know that girl a whole lot more because she is so fun and wild. Uma has a spark rarely seen in actresses nowadays. She has the charisma and the beauty of someone 10 years her junior. Some might think of Uma as eccentric or angry as the characters she portrayed in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. In reality she's warm, funny, and very down to earth.

With her new film Prime, she gets to show off a side rarely seen in the roles she has played' her soft side. Granted, we all got a taste of it with The Truth About Cats and Dogs, but she pits her comedic skills against the likes of Meryl Streep and what the audience is treated to is, gasp!, a grown up romantic comedy. You mean no fart jokes or Sean William Scott supporting character to add the "funny'" Nope, this is a smart film with a timely topic that is on everyone's minds: Can a relationship between an older woman and younger man work' The Cinema Source got the chance to sit down with the Oscar nominated actress as she told us how she feels about the state of women in cinema, dating in the modern world, and how some actors can be oh so vain.

"I'm so bad right now. I'm very, very naughty." Those were some of the words that came out in the first 3 minutes of the interview, and boy was she right. She might look like a stereotypical dumb blonde to some, but what you don't know is Uma is wise beyond her years. Uma was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1970 into a highly unorthodox and Eurocentric family - her mother is a European socialite and former model, her father one of the nation's foremost Buddhist scholars. She grew up in a very rural Western Massachusetts (Amherst to be exact), which so happens is the same part of the country that I grew up in. Knowing this, I can understand how her environment could have affected her upbringing. She and her siblings all have names deriving from Buddhist mythology, so you can imagine how this might have made school life a tad difficult. She, like most actors, took her raw emotions out on the stage and found her true calling in the theater. At 15 she moved to New York City to enroll in high school and received modeling work because of her tall frame and striking looks. This all snowballed into working on the forgettable films like Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, the favorites like Beautiful Girls, and the head scratching The Avengers. All in all, she has a diverse body of work that rivals anyone in her field.

So when talking about Prime, it's easy to see why she would choose a role like Rafi (her character in the film), "It wasn't a typical American romantic comedy, not that I don't like those cause I do. It was tonally more sensitive, subtle, rich and life like and I felt very moved by my character. It was just what the doctor ordered for me. So [it was a] no brainer, when I finished the script it was a clear yes for me." Uma wasn't originally offered the part. Sandra Bullock originally attached to the role of a recently divorced 37-year-old career woman from Manhattan looking for love in all the wrong places. She dropped out right before shooting was about to begin. "I got the call and was like, 'what is wrong with this piece of material'' Sandy's a smart girl, so I skeptically picked it up, counterpoint to that, of course, is Meryl was still involved. She's my hero of all time. I read it and was surprised and moved by it."

Uma had found herself thrust into the project, and shooting began almost immediately. She had a fairly new co-star, Bryan Greenberg, who hadn't acted on much more than One Tree Hill in his career. She felt really good about the direction he brought to the young artist character of David who she falls in love with, even though he is 14 years younger than her character. "I think Bryan's rawness lends itself definitely to the dynamic perfectly. There is something nice about the freshness and unconsciousness to someone learning their craft. I think it's the dynamic that transfers to my character." Uma was singing the praises of Greenberg and his normalness. He wasn't like some of her past co-stars (not naming any names) and he had a naivety about him that added to his performance "He doesn't strike me as being all kinda posed and weird. Some of them are kinda weird like that. You don't see him looking at himself 10 times in the same t-shirt saying 'let's wash it and press it so it hangs better on my shoulder blades'. He's a nice earnest guy. I liked him very much. "

The subject matter and theme was huge factor that drove Uma to want to do the film. "We expect women to be more grown up. We expect women to behave better. We are disturbed when an older woman is going out with a younger man because we think it's just for the sex. That bothers us even though we don't know it bothers us. I think there are a lot of burdens we place on ourselves and our genders." These kind of relationships exist in the modern world, cough cough Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, and you have wonder if how Uma feels about bringing these dating circumstances to conservative America's attention. "It's definitely good to shake it all up."

Being in the public eye as much as she is, she uses that sort of first hand knowledge in portraying Rafi. "My life being the road kill public knowledge that it is, I understood exactly what this character was going through. I know what it's like to wake up a decade later and be single again be alone again. You had a plan and that plan gets derailed. A lot of people in America know what that feels like too." Uma went through a very public divorce with fellow actor Ethan Hawke, whom she met working on the film, Gattaca. Every tabloid followed the story citing infidelity, but Uma has tried to keep her private life private. This sort of experience helped her slip into character a tad easier. "I felt like it was a really an unsarcastic, uncynical, pretty sensitive rendering of a strong decent vulnerable human being in that position and I like that a lot. For me it didn't take a lot of guesswork."

Like everyone else, Streep was very impressed with the range of emotion with different takes that Uma provided. Although, unless you are the director or editor, you might not get to the see what Streep saw. "What was cut out of the movie' Hours of me sobbing. I don't think the movie really suffers from it. I think it's more palatable to not see me really cry. There was a very strong emotional current through this character and it shouldn't overwhelm the movie if it was going to throw the balance off. It wasn't more of a dramatic performance originally, but it was there to do. I think, as Meryl said to someone else, my best work is on the cutting room floor."

Just like anybody, Uma is just a normal person. She has dated and seen her fair share of disasters. As if she couldn't get any more real, she totally describes dating as "terrifying". "Any relationship is better than dating. I don't know how anyone does it these days. The culture has really changed a lot these days. People don't wanna go meet people in bars, because the people you meet in bars are probably gonna stay in the bars." Uma just may have to catch Sex and the City reruns to realize there are single women dealing with dating in different ways other than meeting men at bars. Though, I'm sure her two children, Maya and Roan from her marriage to Hawke, will surely take up most of her dating free time.

Although with the current state of women in film, Uma is not one to fall into stereotypes. In fact, she has pretty much done every type of film from period pieces to action to romantic comedies to animated children's films. Whatever you do, don't use the word "chick flick" to describe Prime or any movie for that matter around her. "I hate that term chick flick. It's the kind of remark that is keeping women in film down. This identification is hurting women's inclusion into cinema. Don't minimize movies that aren't male driven. What could be a guy's picture' Porn' Women will go to men's films with men and men go to men's movies with men, but men feel stigmatized going to a chick flick. It's like it makes them less of a man to cry at Beaches."

Uma has definitely kept busy nowadays. She just filmed The Producers with the original stars Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, and that is coming out this December. "I haven't seen it yet. Just little reviews from websites like Ain't it Cool News. They are fantastic." Uma could not stop complementing the cast from the Tony Award winning musical. "Will Ferrell, at the read through, stole the read through in my opinion." With no official musical theater in her background, she had to train hard to nail down the part of the loopy Swedish bombshell Ulla. "It was terrifying. Luckily I got to work really hard on it. Something called practice and rehearsal was my buddy. Event then I couldn't possibly catch up to somebody who had been doing it on Broadway for 9 months."

The difference for Uma of filming a comedy musical versus a serious drama could garner mixed results from an audience, but her optimistic outlook on film genres shows she has no fears. "With comedies you either laugh and find something interesting or you don't. I'm doing a comedy [Super Ex-Girlfriend with Luke Wilson] right now. The danger of comedy is if it fails it is stupid. If drama fails, it's not compelling, but it might still be interesting. Comedy fails and it's a car accident. That doesn't make it less exciting. It makes the risk factor higher." Uma always takes risks with her daring roles, and has come out on top in the end. That is why in my opinion, she is in a category all her own.