Smash hit

The children’s father was the slacker pin-up Hawke. The couple married in 1998, when Thurman was heavily pregnant. They went on to have a second child, but divorced under heavy tabloid scrutiny in 2004. She doesn’t like to talk about her children’s father, although she once confessed to Oprah Winfrey that infidelity had played its part at the end. The only criticism she voices today is that he never let her listen to her own music.

Perversely, as her personal life hit bottom, her career was back at the top, thanks again to Tarantino. As the heroine of his Kill Bill films, she has never been better. Since then, she hasn’t made a terrific box-office impact, but is stoical about the fact.

“You learn that the first failure isn’t the end. I thought I’d seen the end of my career 10 times over. I’ve experienced them as death blows. What’s nice — after numerous efforts, successes, failures, losses, professional and personal — is to actually accept you’re not going to ace your life. You suffer, then you get on with it. You may spend three months in bed, but, eventually, you’re going to have to get up.” Did you ever spend three months in bed? “Er,” she stutters nervously. “Well, you know . . .”

Though love may be blooming for Thurman, life still isn’t easy. The American tabs are currently filled with stories that Hawke is poised to marry their children’s former nanny, who is heavily pregnant with her own child by him. And this pales to Thurman’s recent nightmares at the hands of a stalker. For two years, Jack Jordan, a former mental patient, besieged Thurman and her family with notes and e-mails, called at her house and delivered pictures of brides with their heads torn off and messages such as, “My hands should be on your body at all times.” He is now under court-ordered psychiatric care.

Does she think she can put the stalker episode behind her? “I don’t know — I hope so. But that leads to my point: how unpredictable life is. You can be singing along, thinking everything is fine, then the rain clouds and the lightning can just sweep in, and you can find yourself devastated. Depressed. You can make bad decisions. It can screw everything.”

She looks sad for a moment, then shakes it off with a tinkling laugh. “But I’ve lived through it all, and goddammit if I haven’t learnt.” With a spanking new fiancé on her arm, it looks as if she’s finally reaping her just reward.

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