Hollywood couple Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke are expecting their second child in January, providing three-year-old daughter Maya Ray with a sibling. And while the couple is celebrating the happy news – Uma is said to be “over the moon” – director Quentin Tarantino remains decidedly nonplussed.
Quentin turned down the chance to appear in pal Robert Rodriguez’s Once Upon A Time in Mexico so that he could complete Kill Bill, the screenplay he’s writing expressly for Uma. After hearing about her pregnancy, Quentin hoped to go ahead and shoot Kill Bill without Uma, with whom he's been good friends since Pulp Fiction, which garnered the 31-year-old beauty a best supporting actress Oscar nomination.
According to sources, however, bosses at Miramax would have none of that. Executives at the production company want to wait for Uma rather than re-cast the project. And while filmmakers can often hide their actresses’ pregnant figures – Madonna shot much of Evita while expecting – the physically demanding role in Quentin’s film precludes such a measure.
In Kill Bill, Uma is to play a prostitute who falls into a coma after being shot by her pimp. Waking up nine years later, she sets out to exact revenge on her former boss, who will likely be played by Warren Beatty. The film is Quentin’s first entirely original piece since Pulp Fiction in 1994.
Uma’s priorities have changed now she is a mother. “Since I’ve had my daughter, I’ve struggled with ambivalence about going away to work,” she says. “It’s just hard, and it sort of makes me feel like if a film is not extraordinary… I have this beautiful small baby. What am I going to do? Go sit around and play somebody’s girlfriend? It would make me cuckoo to go sit in a trailer for no good reason. So I just end up talking myself out of work all the time.”
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
