Writer-director Quentin Tarantino was so determined to cast Uma Thurman as the star of Kill Bill that he postponed filming until she gave birth to her second child. Steve Pratt reports

Hollywood actress Uma Thurman became The Bride in a late night conversation with writer-director Quentin Tarantino while they were making Pulp Fiction. The idea for the character was born over a chat in the bar - an assassin left for dead after a wedding day massacre and who, four years later, seeks revenge on those responsible

A decade later The Bride, aka assassin Black Mamba, arrives in a blood-soaked flurry of martial arts and samurai sword action in Tarantino's new film Kill Bill.

That was after a pregnant pause, when he postponed filming until after Thurman had given birth to her second child Roan.

Three months after the birth, new mum Thurman began the physical training for the role of The Bride. She spent nine weeks being taught by martial arts master Yeun Wo-Ping, the man responsible for the wire work in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix. Having only held a sword in school, she was required to master fighting with a samurai sword, hand-to-hand combat, eight types of kicks, flips on a wire, back flips, front flips and the Japanese language.

She did many of her own stunts and says Kill Bill - which is being released on two parts, the first this month and the second in February - was one of the most fulfilling roles of her career. "It was mad, my character has to struggle and fight throughout the entire journey. For me, to discover something in myself I really didn't think I could do was kind of amazing," she says.

"I was very overweight from pregnancy and the entire wardrobe department had bloody fingers from taking my costume in every week because I was slowly shrinking and it was getting down to the wire, 'is she going to make it or is this going to be a very large bottomed samurai?'."

Tarantino refused to cast another actress, insisting on waiting for Thurman to give birth before starting filming. The 33-year-old actress herself says there's "very little she wouldn't do" for the director.

"I was incredibly pleased, amazed and overwhelmed," she says. "It was a testament to his loyalty, his friendship, his patience and his general goodness.

"Mind you, they used to call me from production saying, 'okay, when's the baby coming?'. And I said, 'listen guys, if you put any more pressure on me to drop this baby, I'm going to hang on to it. He's going to be so overdue, he's going to come out with dry feet, I swear to God'." Once cameras rolled, there was no letting up. In the climactic battle set in the House of Blue Leaves, The Bride takes on 88 Chinese swordsmen. The pressure was immense, she admits. "Denial seemed to be the best way to move forward. The only thing I ever had was the constantly moving goal line," she says.

"It was a case of 'I will do my best. I will do my best in the next hour. I will do my best in this shot. I will stand back up again after I fall down.' That was sort of how I had to take it."

Off-screen, Thurman has recently separated from her actor husband Ethan Hawke, and says her main priority is their two children, Roan, now two, and five-year-old Maya. "The love that I feel for being a mother is pretty unlimited and I wouldn't trade it for anything," she says.

It's unlikely she'll let them see the blood-splattered Kill Bill, and she doesn't like to watch violent movies herself. "It's so powerfully effective that I feel the pain I'm watching," she says.

"I can't bear it, but I think Quentin walks such a strange line with it that it's fantasy enough. It's not personalised."

She became very possessive about her samurai sword. "I earned it. It took a long time and I learned the hard way how to handle it, so my favourite thing in the whole movie is that journey that took me to that sword," she says.

She certainly got to put it to good use in the House of Blue Leaves fight which lasts 20 minutes on screen. "On the schedule that sequence was supposed to be two weeks of filming," she recalls. "Eight weeks later when I walked off the set, covered in blood with my sword and my beautiful fight team behind me and I fell to my knees, I realised I had been involved in something and done something that was going to break every rule of the cinema."

She's also spoken of how making Kill Bill has given her a physical confidence she didn't have before. "Before the film, I was always in my head, thinking, wondering, a little disconnected. I would walk around in my body but not really pay attention to it.

"Kill Bill forced me into my body in an incredible way. And, although it was incredibly taxing and stressful, it had a kind of human effect. It's great to get out of your head and into your body."

* Kill Bill Volume l (18) opens in cinemas nationwide tomorrow

Published: ??/??/2003