Uma Thurman talks about being a Manhattan mom, on screen and off

Uma Thurman

Uma Thurman is a busy mother who lives in New York City — and that’s about as much as she has in common with the Eliza Welch character she plays in the dramedy film "Motherhood." Eliza is a harried mother of two who writes a blog about motherhood, but she experiences a lot of doubt and frustration over giving up her career as a fiction writer to become a blogger

In real life, Thurman obviously has no doubts about her choice of profession, since acting is her passion and life’s calling. Even though Thurman doesn’t display her personal life on the Internet like many bloggers do, she be can be open in interviews about some of her own flaws and insecurities — which she did when I sat down with her and "Motherhood" writer/director Katherine Dieckmann at the "Motherhood" press junket in New York City. And naturally, we talked about things related to "Motherhood," including blogging, making movies in New York City, and how parenthood has changed their lives.

If you were a blogger in real life, what would you blog about?

Thurman: What would I want to blog about? Gee, I don’t know! You know what? I never thought about it. I don’t know. I don’t know about blogging, I mean, I play the blogger but I saw it just as a frustrated writer just needing to find her own voice and what I loved about the movie I think is endemic in the blogging aspect, which is that she’s writing about what she cares about. And I haven’t read a lot of blogs but if someone writes about what they care about, I’m sure it’s interesting.

Uma Thurman in "Motherhood"

What’s been your experience with motherhood, compared to Eliza’s experience?

Thurman: Well, that’s sort of a very large subject but … what I loved about the piece is I found it very honest and I found a lot of common threads that almost felt like an intimacy with what Katherine [Dieckmann] wrote. She just sort of, with a great deal of humor and sort of bittersweet beauty, just kind of described something that I felt I had largely shared. The details are different.

Besides being a mother, what else do you have in common with Eliza?

Thurman: We have a family mantra: "Why do it right when you can do it yourself?" Parenting is a very intimate and amazing experience and one of the best experiences of my life.

Uma Thurman in "Motherhood"

Eliza’s family is very traditional but yours is not. Does having a nontraditional family make parenting more difficult?

Thurman: I don’t know because I can’t judge anyone else’s experience. I think this story shows you exactly how an intelligent and real person is struggling within what you just described as like the perfect setup: two parents, two kids. Like she’s having an incredibly hard time and searching for the purpose of of her efforts and losing touch with it and then refinding it. You know, I can’t comment about anyone else’s life. I’ve just handled my own circumstances as best I can. It’s all I know. I don’t know it any other way.

What’s been the biggest parenting challenge you’ve ever had?

Thurman: Sleep deprivation is a known torture, I think, one of the ones that George Bush signed off on. It is a part in parcel of having a child. It starts when you’re pregnant. I never ever slept again after my first pregnancy. Never! I was a champion sleeper as a young person. I could wake up, go back to sleep, wake up, do it again, stay in bed a long time. It was almost like an Olympic sport for me.

Now that your kids are older …

Thurman: They’re fine. I’m the one with the problem. [She says jokingly] The gun is loaded. I know where it is in the house.

Uma Thurman (far right) in "Motherhood"

There’s a scene in "Motherhood" where Eliza and her neighbors are annoyed with having a movie filmed on their street. Since "Motherhood" was filmed on location in New York City, did any real New Yorkers get mad at you while you were the production?

Dieckmann: Of course! Of course! Well, we shot on my block …

Thurman: Poor Katherine.

Dieckmann: Which I wouldn’t really advise doing that to anybody. But, you know, I’m very literal-minded so that’s what I knew and my building does look out on my kids’ school and those geographic things are true. And I like it when movies have actually real geography. But, I was lucky in that I’d given money for years to my block association, like since like 1989.

Thurman: You are so lucky!

Dieckmann: So the head of the block association sort of went around and told the neighbors and said "Look, she’s one of us." And that didn’t stop people from being pissy, but in general there was like a lot of good will.

Anthony Edwards, Katherine Dieckmann, Uma Thurman and Minnie Driver at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival

So no one threw urine out the window at the film crew, like in the movie?

Thurman: Literally pissy! [She laughs.]

Dieckmann: Nothing of a urine-like nature landed on any of us.

Do you have any horror stories of being a New Yorker who has a neighborhood taken over by a film production?

Thurman: I like seeing movies being shot. I’m always kind of bouncing around and I always look enviously at those trucks on the street, and I think "Who’s getting to make a movie here at home? Why can’t I be inside that truck more often?" It’s the greatest, and it’s so nice to get to do what you love to do. The down side of acting is the travel. The up side of travel life is travel often, too, but it’s hard to do it all.

Uma Thurman at the 2009 Boston Film Festival premiere of "Motherhood"

Have you found motherhood as more of a stumbling block than aging in terms of your career?

Thurman: Yeah, that’s about to come and grab me and smash me in the head … I started [in the entertainment business] so young, when I was 16 … Everyone was telling me it wasn’t to work my entire career, and then somehow I still hung around.

Motherhood definitely took the focus off of my work. And I didn’t mind. I had a few panics when I thought that if I wanted to work, I couldn’t get a job anymore, and then I would get one once in a while and it would make me feel better. I love what I do though, I really do and I think that for my well being I need to be reminded that I have other purposes and it’s just stabilizing in an almost indescribable way.

Your work is like your man, I think in modern life. You know what I mean? Like in the old days when, you know, people pined for the husband. Your work … it’s your love …

Dieckmann: It’s stability.

Thurman: It’s stability and it’s grounding and whatever healthy or unhealthy places your brain can go. Work is grounding and helps.

Uma Thurman in "Motherhood"

Eliza seems to feel that work is a very good thing for women, and she has a conversation with her daughter about it. Do you ever have that conversation with your children?

Thurman: I haven’t worked enough to let them know. I think they’re fine about it, but I’ve never left them for any period of time. So we’ll see.

Quentin Tarantino says he’s going to make a third "Kill Bill" movie. What can you say about it?

Thurman: I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you.

Urma Thurman (center) in "Motherhood"

"Motherhood" takes place in one day. Have either of you ever had that one monumental day where you realized what motherhood means to you? Did you ever have an "a-ha" moment?

Thurman: That "a-ha" moment. There’s so many. I don’t know, somebody once said to me something I found helpful, which is that parenting is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. And I thought that was so helpful, because you feel so awful about something going wrong. Or you wish you could have done better … I guess I put a lot of pressure on myself. I feel like I’ve ruined everything, you know? And life is long and all of your unnoticed good efforts also add up to something … How would you say it, Katherine

Dieckmann: I’ll guess what I think you’re saying, which is that there’s no singular stopping point where you kind of go, "Oh, OK I get it." … You’re kind of in it for this long haul, and like Uma says, I think most mothers are very self-critical and constantly wondering if they’re incurring damage that’s going to result in years of therapy, even though they’re trying not to.

But you also can’t get around that and no matter how much you do that you feel is right, you’re going to do things that are wrong and kind of coming to a point of accepting that, and then trying to enjoy this kind of wonderful but difficult process of your children growing up and away from you, which is a lot of what the movie’s about.

Eliza has two apartments so she has somewhere to get away when things get too hectic and noisy. Do you have a "getaway" place like that?

Thurman: No! I have nowhere to go. [She laughs.]

Uma Thurman (center) in "Motherhood"

One of the things that we see in "Motherhood" is how mothers can be very judgmental of each other. Have you experienced that kind of harsh judgment in real life?

Thurman: Tons! There are wonderful specifics that Katherine wrote in the piece. And I myself have even done it to people. I saw this father lifting his kid up by the arm the other day, and I’m like, "Argh! I know that’s why I have shoulder problems!"

Uma Thurman in "Motherhood"

Uma, you’re a very private person and writing a blog is a very public thing. How did you relate to being a blogger?

Thurman: Well, I personally didn’t write the blog [in "Motherhood"], so for me I had no interaction. It’s a performance. Katherine wrote it.

Dieckmann: I’ve never written a blog. I just made it up. I completely made the whole thing up. I did.

What about Twitter? Would you ever do that?

Thurman: I don’t know. Look, let’s never say never … I’d like to run the marathon too, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. Who knows?

Jodie Foster, Katherine Dieckmann, Uma Thurman, Minnie Driver and Anthony Edwards at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival premiere of "Motherhood" in Park City, Utah

Is there anything your mother said to you that you swore you’d never say to your kids — but then you found yourself saying the same thing to your kids?

Thurman: I can’t remember right now.

Dieckmann: "If you don’t …" You know, something threatening, punitive. "And that’s because …" And then I actually say to my daughter, "I can’t believe I just said that!"

Uma Thurman at the New York City premiere of "Motherhood"

Do you think you’ll have another child someday?

Thurman: You never know. I don’t want to talk about my private life like that.

How do you feel about how the film industry is changing?

Thurman: It’s scary! I’m worried there’ll be no more movies.

Would you do anything differently, knowing what you know now?

Thurman: I’d like to fix the world. I’d like to fix myself! Of course, I wish I’d learned more as an actor, but I’ve always tried. It takes time. I’ve enjoyed my journey. I feel like I’m still learning, so that’s a good place to be.