Uma Karuna Thurman

• Family background
Thurman's father, Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman (b. August 3, 1941), was born in New York City, to Elizabeth Dean (Farrar), a stage actress, and Beverly Reid Thurman, Jr., an Associated Press editor and United Nations translator. Robert Thurman was professor of religion at Amherst College from 1973 to 1988, when he accepted a position at Columbia University, where he was a professor of Tibetan Buddhism. Robert is of English, German, Scottish, and Irish ancestry.
Uma Thurman's mother, Nena von Schlebrügge, was a model born in Mexico City, Mexico, in 1941. Uma's maternal grandfather was Colonel Baron Friedrich Karl Johannes von Schlebrügge, a German cavalry officer in the first World War, in business in Berlin during the '20s and '30s; he left for Mexico when the Nazis were seeking to jail him, after he refused to continue in the army to train younger soldiers. Uma's maternal grandmother was Swedish-born Birgit Holmquist, from Trelleborg, who in 1930 modelled for a nude statue that overlooks the harbor of Smygehuk, Sweden (Birgit's father was of Swedish descent and Birgit's mother was of German and Danish descent). Thurman's mother was previously married to LSD guru Timothy Leary.