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Articles Source / Date: Us July 1997 Title / Page(s): "Take Two: Batman's Bad Girl" by Peter Travers pp 49 UMA THURMAN DOESN'T PLAY EITHER OF THE title roles in Batman and Robin, but it's hard not to notice this slinky 6-footer. "I'm Poison . ." she purrs to a male victim who has puckered for her lethal kiss, "Poison Ivy." And so she is, causing George Clooney's Caped Crusader and Chris O'Donnell's Boy Wonder to scratch after her instead of good girls Elle Macpherson and Alicia Silverstone. Thurman delivers her villain's refrain-"So many people to kill, so little time"-with a languorous mischief that spells star, baby. Or at least it should. For curious reasons, Thurman's star has stubbornly refused to ascend. At 27, Thurman has appeared in 15 films and inspired countless sexual fantasies after rising naked from a scallop shell in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen back in 1989. The next year, way before anyone had ever heard of Ellen, she did a lesbian love scene in Henry and June that helped earn the film an NC-17 rating. Soon after, she married actor Gary Oldman, then divorced the wild man 18 months later. In 1995, she received an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress for Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, her only bona fide box-office smash. "Uma, Oprah; Oprah, Uma," offered Oscars host David Letterman in a misfire comic intro that nonetheless made Uma a household name. What it failed to do was put Thurman in the American sweetheart circle with Sandra Bullock, Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts. The lady wants it that way. Being liked, really liked, would give her poison ivy. Thurman disdains Hollywood ("Even the air is dishonest"), glamour ("Image to me is Madonna - don't have that") and actresses who make what she calls "fashion movies." Thurman watchers agree that the Boston-born beauty looks more European than American. No accident there. Her Swedish-German mother, Nena von Schlebrugge, was a model before becoming a psychotherapist. After divorcing first husband Timothy Leary, the acid guru, von Schlebrugge married Robert Thurman, the first American to be ordained a Buddhist monk. The couple trekked often to India and Europe with worldly Uma (Hindi for "bestower of blessings"). Although John Malkovich, Thurman's co-star in Dangerous Liaisons, refers to her "horrifyingly great brain," the well-read acrress has never been to college. Her snob sophistication manifests itself in the way she scorns the trappings of fame. It just plain angers Thurman when she makes movies with the likes of Malkovich or Robert De Niro (Mad Dog and Glory) and the reviews focus on her breasts. Offscreen, she wears no makeup; her manner is similarly direct. To hell with those sympathetic parts that she finds "incredibly boring." Admirable thinking, but aside from her comic flair in Pulp Fiction, Thurman has yet to show the range or the daring of, say, Winona Ryder. If you're going to give off a vibe that says you're above the common herd, you had better deliver. Between Dangerous Liaisons, in which she hit an incisive note of corrupted innocence, and Pulp Fiction, Thurman's resume is hardly impressive. Her 1987 debut as a man trap in the exploitative Kiss Daddy Good Night can be written off as a youthful indiscretion (she was 16 at the time). But Where the Heart Is, Final Analysis, Jennifer 8, Mad Dog and Glory and the Gus Van Sant megaflop Even Cowgirls Get the Blues were of a badness that Thurman did little to alleviate. Thurman claims to be a choosy actress. So why, oh, why did she choose to follow Pulp Fiction with less rewarding supporting roles-a tease in A Month by the Lake and a tough broad in Beautiful Girls, with then boyfriend Timothy Hutton? Last year, in The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Thurman played the bubbleheaded beauty to Janeane Garofalo's brainy plain Jane. It was a chance for her to get inside a character that is too easily caricatured. To these eyes, she blew it. Thurman's wink kept signaling us: smart girl slumming. Her upcoming movies suggest that Thurman is again hiding behind her cool beauty and wit. The trailer for the futuristic Gattaca shows her looking glacial. Les Misérables, with Liam Neeson and Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush, is a costume epic. She did snag the lead opposite Ralph Fiennes in The Avengers-after Gwyneth Paltrow passed-but an adventure romp hardly qualifies as a stretch. Shortly before his death in 1995, director Louis Malle was about to give Thurman a real challenge, as screen legend Marlene Dietrich, the German ice queen with reserves of inner fire. Until Thurman risks getting her own wings burned, audiences are likely to hold her at bay. "I want to dance, and I want to win," she told John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Now, that's the passion that marks the difference between an actress with staying power and a promise unfulfilled.