The daughter of Robert Thurman, ex-wife of Ethan Hawke, and muse of Quentin Tarantino, Uma is a gangly actress and in-demand pitchwoman.

The daughter of Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, Uma was raised in Amherst, Mass. and Woodstock, NY. She was 15 when she dropped out of high school to move to New York and landed a series of modeling gigs before breaking into films with a role in Kiss Daddy Goodnight. Most of Uma's early parts capitalized on her looks-she appeared in various states of undress in Dangerous Liaisons and Henry & June, but in 1994, she was tapped by Quentin Tarantino to play Mia in Pulp Fiction, which garnered her an Oscar nod and remains one of her most successful films. Alas, she squandered some of that cred in the ensuing years in mediocre films like The Truth About Cats and Dogs and Batman & Robin. Following some time off to have her second child, she proved herself as an action heroine, in Quentin Tarantino's 2003 epic two-parter Kill Bill.

Uma also has numerous lucrative endorsements have included campaigns for Tag Heuer, Lancôme, and Louis Vuitton. Thurman married actor Gary Oldman at age 20 for two years. She met her second husband, Ethan Hawke, on the set of Gattica. They married in 1998 and had two children before divorcing in 2004 after Hawke confessed to dalliances with a model. (Hawke also reportedly suspected that his wife was messing around with Quentin Tarantino.) Uma dated hotelier Andre Balazs on and off for three years and in 2012 she announced that she was pregnant with her longtime boyfriend, Swiss financier Arpad "Arki" Busson. [Image via Getty]