One movie almost derailed Uma Thurman’s entire career: “Like pouring cold water on yourself”
If you’d have asked a teenage boy in the 1990s who their favourite actor was, chances are they would have said Uma Thurman. The iconic star became a mainstay of the decade, adorning movie posters and bedroom walls alike. Her talents shone through in critical darlings such as Pulp Fiction, as well as blockbusters like Batman & Robin. Then, there were all the hits that followed in the decades to come. Basically, she smashed it.
Nevertheless, it hasn’t always been easy for the Kill Bill star. In her ’90s pomp, she turned up in The Avengers, which was sadly not a record-breaking superhero movie, but rather a lacklustre adaptation of the British TV show of the same name. Even Thurman herself admitted she knew it was going to flop. Prior to becoming a big star, she played Maid Marian in a schlocky TV adaptation of Robin Hood, which was thankfully overshadowed by the much more successful Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
In 1994, Thurman appeared in the Gus Van Sant vehicle, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. She played Sissy Hankshaw, a woman born with larger-than-average thumbs. Yes, this is the basis of an entire movie. Sissy uses her underwhelming superhero to hitchhike across the US, getting into various scrapes as she moves along. If you think this sounds like a load of old rubbish, congratulations, you’re not alone.
The film flopped on every conceivable level. Very few people went to see it, and the ones that did wished they hadn’t. Punters realised that the novel on which the story was based belonged to another age, and its easy-going nature simply did not translate to the big screen. This was a real problem for Thurman, who told Vanity Fair that she was hoping the film would be a lifeline for her. “Every time you haven’t worked in a while and you do a bomb, it’s like pouring cold water on yourself,” she relayed.
Prior to Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Thurman’s main reputation was as a former model trying her luck in the film world. She’d had a minor brush with success with her role in Dangerous Liaisons, but that was about it. Starring in a well-publicised stinker was precisely what her fledgling career didn’t need. She was nominated for a Golden Raspberry award for her role as Sissy, and it looked like the game might have been up. Luckily for Thurman, salvation was just around the corner.
Film buffs will know that 1994 was also the year that established her legacy forever with her legendary turn as Mia Wallace in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. “I didn’t get it at first,” Thurman explained, referring to the fact that she almost turned the film down. “But when I met Quentin, I realised he was an artist who was using violence and profanity in a painterly way, not a brutal, ghoulish one, like the bold colours of the pulp fiction of the ’30s, so people could experience it but not have to confront it.”
In the same year she was up for a Razzie, Thurman was also nominated for the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ Oscar. This story just goes to show how quickly careers can change in Hollywood; sometimes for the worse and, in this case, infinitely for the better.
