Uma Thurman On The Chaos & Confusion Of Motherhood

Throughout her 20-year career Uma Thurman has played everything from a superhero to an assassin. Next up for the Boston-born beauty? A frazzled mom in her upcoming film, Motherhood.

It’s a role that Uma, who has kids Maya, 11, and Levon, 7, with her ex-husband Ethan Hawke, knows well.

“When my son turned 7, I sort of stood up straight,” she tells The Times. “And I suddenly realised I had been like this [makes expansive gesture of exhaustion], in one way or the other, for the past 10 years.”

Having plenty of firsthand experience with the film’s subject matter, Uma thinks that Motherhood does a good job of capturing the “chaos and confusion” that so many moms face.

“That’s what Motherhood is about. The chaos and the confusion – and also the loss of yourself. Of course there is a good part to losing yourself – any mother that doesn’t give herself up isn’t a good mother, but at the same time you can get to a point where you can’t reach the identity that helped you be stable in the first place – and that is quite a frightening feeling. I must have gone through years of it. Just years of confusion. Guilty when you’re here and guilty when you’re there, of being torn in half.”

Now that her kids are growing up, however, Uma says she is starting to be able to focus on herself again as well. Her goal right now is one that a lot of moms likely share!

“My big wish now is to make a little time for myself. I think many women, working women, get this. I mean how do you justify that hour and a half to yourself? When you have this to do and that to do and you want to be there… So I really want to do that. I really think it’s necessary.”

The Kill Bill star also hopes to refocus on her career, which she says is a part of her life that she’s been missing lately. Now 39, Uma is still known as one of Hollywood’s most beautiful leading ladies. Though she says she “completely understands” why some of her colleagues go under the knife, she isn’t interested in succumbing to the industry’s “obsession with eternal youth.”

“I think it’s very good to look healthy,” Uma reveals. “I feel very happy to look healthy – but I don’t want to live a tortured life of neurosis about it all.”

Motherhood, co-starring Minnie Driver, is scheduled to hit theaters this December.