Uma Thurman

It all started on the set of Pulp Fiction . Uma discovered that apart from getting along perfectly with Quentin Tarantino professionally , she also got along quite well on a personal basis. During breaks, the director told her about her fondness for martial arts tapes, which Uma Thurman also shared. During the 80s, she was fascinated by those kinds of movies. From Bruce Lee ‘s Movie Talks , Jackie Chanand company came out a curious project. Tarantino asked Uma to imagine what the ideal character would be like to make her own kung-fu movie. Uma immediately thought of a woman, since so far no one had been the lead in a movie like that. This is how “the bride” was born, to which Tarantino referred in a dialogue from Pulp Fiction. “I thought that everything would remain an anecdote, but Uma was enthusiastic about the character, designed her image and found motivation for her,” explains Tarantino. For Uma, the trait that best defines “the bride” is that she “has a certain inner nobility”, despite the fact that she is a murderer. “She No she is dedicated to secretly persecuting and eliminating certain people. She approaches each of the Vipers in her own environment, lets them pick their weapons, and challenges them to a duel. That is, she follows a kind of ethical code ”.

This creation would be the genesis of Kill Bill , which according to the credits is based on characters created by Q & U, initials for Quentin and Uma. When Tarantino started writing the script, he often consulted with Uma. “I even left the characters more open than usual, so that she could continue to contribute ideas,” says the filmmaker.

In order to get used to the tone that the film would have, Uma did not stop watching B-movies, which the filmmaker provided her, in a process that she herself calls “my training in genre films”, during which she discovered classic films from Hong Kong action like The Assassin , or Sergio Leone ‘s spaghetti-westerns. His training was completed with extensive training in martial arts, very similar to what his character would receive on the film, by master Yuen Woo-Ping , a renowned choreographer of the kung-fu sequences in The Matrix . “The most important thing he taught me was how to learn,” recalls Uma. The teacher was tough, although not as hard as the one who teaches “the bride” to fight, but he is full of praise when he remembers the effort the actress made. He “had a harder time learning than the others, and he had to fight with people who had been doing it all their lives. Still, he impressed me a lot, because he wouldn’t stop rehearsing and repeating the moves until he had them down. She is a true professional,” Woo-Ping explains. Training finished, everything was ready to roll…

But one day Uma visited the gynecologist and he congratulated her. “Congratulations, you are pregnant.” Magnificent news for Uma, of course, for Ethan Hawke , the father of the child, and even for the friend Tarantino, but inopportune for the producers Harvey Weinstein and Lawrence Bender, who found out just as they were about to announce the start of filming, a large budget production With all the equipment hired, and the sets built, the normal thing would have been to replace her with another actress. But Tarantino flatly refused. “It was my movie ‘Joseph Von Sternberg.’ If you were Joseph Von Sternberg, you were about to shoot Morocco , and Marlene Dietrichgot pregnant, what would you do? Would you shoot with another actress? Of course not.

You would wait for Dietrich. And the history of cinema would appreciate it”, Tarantino justifies himself, who with the perspective of time considers that the delay was good for the film, since it allowed them to calmly prepare for filming in China and Japan. The first clapperboard hit was finally moved to March 2, 2002, and Uma was there punctually, after giving birth two months earlier. Apparently the three months the team spent abroad were exhausting, and Uma was homesick for her. “I have never been so happy to see wall-to-wall carpet before. It was fantastic to be at home and everything was so different that it seemed like another movie”, confesses the actress.

And after so much action, the actress continues in a dynamic plan and has not stopped working. She is about to premiere Be Cool , by F. Gary Gray , sequel to How to Win Hollywood , in which she accompanies John Travolta , the protagonist of the first installment. She is currently filming Hugh Wilson ‘s romantic comedy Accidental Husband , with Brendan Fraser , and has a role in Prime , a film of the same genre. But she will always save a place on her agenda for her Tarantino. In fifteen years they plan to shoot a kind of sequel to Kill Bill. In addition, the actress would like to become a Bond girl, if Quentin Tarantino finally manages to direct the new version of Casino Royale , a project that excites him and for which he does not cease to persecute the producers of the saga, and for which he would like to count as the lead with Pierce Brosnan . Thurman has put a condition on her. “My character spanking Bond,” she said.