US actress Uma Thurman is starring in a new Netflix show “Chambers”, which premiered at the Series Mania festival in the northern French city of Lille (FRANCOIS LO PRESTI)

Lille (France) (AFP) – US actress Uma Thurman said the #MeToo movement is transforming Hollywood for the better but warned that it shouldn’t be used to “crush people’s creativity”.

The star of “Pulp Fiction” and the “Kill Bill” movies, whose actress daughter Maya Hawke will appear in Quentin Tarantino’s new film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, said the movement is a “long overdue correction” to the treatment of women in the film industry.

“I am so happy about it especially as I have a 20-year-old daughter who has decided to give her life to film, television and the theatre,” she said.

But the actress, who is starring in a new Netflix show “Chambers”, which premiered Wednesday at the Series Mania festival in the northern French city of Lille, warned against a slip into puritanism. 

“In a certain way I don’t want this to crush people’s creativity,” she told reporters.

– ‘Don’t want to get arrested’ –

“It would still be nice to fall in love with your leading man and not get arrested,” Thurman added, referring to her marriage to fellow actor Ethan Hawke, who she met on “Gattaca” in 1997.

Thurman, 48, had earlier married English star Gary Oldman after meeting him on the set of “State of Grace”. 

“I think we are moving from a very ignorant place to a better, more creative place that is based on respect,” the actress said.

She said the #MeToo effect was “definitely producing a better working environment for women. There were so many situations where you could not have been in a worse working environment — I take that back, actually you probably could — but you had to survive that kind of stuff. It is definitely safer,” she said.

“I get 12 shades of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) just watching myself now,” she joked, after looking at a showreel of her earlier work.

Thurman — who plays a grieving mother in the new Netflix supernatural horror series which will start streaming next month — said #MeToo has “already made a difference” to the kind of roles being written for women.

“There are lots more real parts (around) and you don’t just sit around talking about men, although I admit I talk about men all the time,” she added.

– Von Trier is ‘real artist’ –

The depressingly ironic thing, she said, “it seems to me that before Women’s Lib there were often better roles for women in Betty Davis” films and the like than there were in recent years.

Thurman, who made her big screen debut as Venus in Terry Gilliam’s “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” when she was just 16, said working with Tarantino had been her career high so far.

“I truly feel blessed having worked with him. He is such a genius.”

But she also defended the controversial Danish auteur Lars von Trier, whose latest shocker, “The House That Jack Built”, was seen as giving the finger to the #MeToo movement.

Thurman, who played the first victim of its woman-hating serial killer, admitted that it could be difficult working with the director, having also starred in his notorious 2013 movie, “Nymphomaniac”.

“I think he is funny. His material is tough, and it was tough for me to do, but he is a real artist. I respect him,” she said.

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