Uma Thurman's back in action in ‘The Old Guard 2′ on Netflix

Boston Globe

01-07-2025

But even by western Mass standards, her family was different. In addition to being a professor at Amherst College,
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'I think what gave us the extra bit of weird was the Buddhist factor,' Thurman says.
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It all worked out, of course. After an occasionally awkward girlhood that included an itinerant education in the Pioneer Valley — she attended the Campus School at Smith College, Wildwood Elementary School in Amherst, Amherst Regional Junior High School, and Northfield Mount Hermon, the boarding school in Gill — Thurman moved to New York and quickly established herself as a talented actress of considerable range.
Now, at 55, she has appeared in dozens of films, playing everything from ingénue (1988's 'Dangerous Liaisons') to comic book villain (1997's 'Batman & Robin') to mob wife with a black bob (1994's 'Pulp Fiction') to swashbuckling assassin in a tracksuit (2003's 'Kill Bill: Volume 1'). Along the way, she's been nominated for an Academy Award ('Pulp Fiction');
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Thurman says her upbringing proved to be important in a few ways. She discovered her love of movies while sneaking into
'There I was amongst this troupe of great British actors at [the Italian film studio]
And it was at Northfield Mount Hermon, playing Abigail in a production of Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible,' that Thurman was first noticed. An agent from New York saw the show and spoke afterward to its tall, 10th-grade leading lady. 'He said, 'If you come to New York, I'll help you get real acting lessons and send you on auditions,'' Thurman recalls.
Initially, though, the roles being offered to an attractive blonde-haired, blue-eyed actress were the opposite of interesting.
'I understood I was going to have very limited options if I didn't really learn how to be a character actress, so I pursued that with ferocity,' Thurman says. 'If you have a humanity inside of you that sees how objectified and looked down upon women are, you don't want to be something that you just don't relate to.'
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Uma Thurman (at right) with Charlize Theron in Netflix's "The Old Guard 2"
Eli Joshua Ade/Netflix
While she has played plenty of strong, self-possessed female characters in her career, Thurman has not made many action movies — aside from director Quentin Tarantino's two 'Kill Bill' films, in which she wields a lethal sword as The Bride. But in 'Old Guard 2' — a sequel to 2020's '
''Kill Bill' turned out to be this iconic, trailblazing, singular, cinematic moment, and I've noticed in all cases, when you do something really well, you kind of get asked to burn yourself out in that genre,' she says. 'But you look at someone like Charlize and the way she creates her own work. I wish I had had more of that kind of energy...You can see that it can be done and it's people like that who are trailblazers.'
Asked if she's been satisfied with the roles she is offered now that she's older, Thurman sighs.
'I heard Jodie Foster say this: 'When you're in your 20s, they say it's going to be over when you're in your 30s. And when you're in your 30s, they say it's going to be over when you're in your 40s.' And so on,' Thurman says. 'You're given multiple death sentences as an actress, as a woman, because of the industry and its focus on youth.
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'But I think finding good roles is as hard today as it ever was.'
Mark Shanahan can be reached at