Thurman's powerful performance as June, the controlling wife of Henry Miller in Philip Kaufman's "Henry and June" (1990), revealed her to be an actress with considerable depth and ability. She turned in another strong performance as a blind woman targeted by a serial killer in Bruce Robinson's dark "Jennifer 8" (1992) and played an indentured servant to cop Robert De Niro and gangster Bill Murray in the unusual gangster romance "Mad Dog and Glory" (1993). Gus Van Sant's lumbering "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" (1994), a long-awaited but unsatisfying adaptation of the popular Tom Robbins novel, virtually wasted the actress in the leading role of hitchhiker Sissy Hankshaw. But these roles were merely warm-ups for her strong turn as a drug addicted gangster's wife in Quentin Tarantino's acclaimed "Pulp Fiction" (1994). After engaging in a twist with co-star John Travolta, her character overdoses and in a truly shocking and disturbing scene, Travolta is forced to plunge a needle in her chest. For her efforts, she was rewarded with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.

While Thurman garnered praise for her turn as a young coquette flirting with Edward Fox in John Irving's "A Month by the Lake" (1995), the film stumbled at the box office. She fared slightly better in Ted Demme's ensemble drama "Beautiful Girls" (1996), as an outsider visiting a small town. Thurman next played against type as a less than intellectual blonde helping friend Janeane Garofalo win a handsome beau in the comedy "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" (1996). Shifting gears, she offered a scene-stealing turn as villainess Poison Ivy to George Clooney's Dark Knight in "Batman & Robin" (1997). Thurman then returned to a more conventional role as the upright, somewhat frosty and passive worker in a futuristic space program who is romanced by a co-worker in the futuristic thriller "Gattaca" (also 1997). She followed with a highly-praised performance as Fantine in Bille August's 1998 remake of "Les Miserables" before teaming with Ralph Fiennes as Emma Peel to his John Steed in a big screen version of the hit 60s TV show "The Avengers" (also 1998), which was poorly received by critics and audiences alike.

There was a noticable slowing down of Thurman's career as she settled into her new role as wife and mother. However, she did find time to take roles which appealed to her. She appeared to good effect in small roles in non-mainstream projects, both in Woody Allen's winning "The Sweet and the Lowdown" in 1999 and her husband Hawke's high-minded art film "Chelsea Walls" in 2001. In 2002, she received positive reviews for her role in the HBO film "Hysterical Blindness." Thurman played successfully against type as a desperately insecure working-class girl from New Jersey who, along with her best friend from high school (Juliette Lewis), spends her nights patrolling the local bar for love and some kind of direction. By 2003 she was a media darling all over again, for both professional and personal reasons: shortly after her high-profile separation from Hawke, she returned to screens under the direction of Quentin Tarantino in "Kill Bill, Vol. 1" (2003) and "Kill Bill, Vol. 2" (2004), the writer-director's bloody two-part magnum opus and tribute to the beloved exploitation films and Sergio Leone movies of his youth, based on a notion he and Thurman cooked up on the set of "Pulp Fiction" years earlier. Thurman, in a bravura performance, played The Bride, a nameless woman beaten and left for dead who arises from a coma to wrek ultra-violent vengeance on her betrayer and his martial artist minions. The actress never looked more beautiful or formidable on screen. In between "Bill" instalments, Thurman also appeared opposite Ben Affleck in the John Woo-directed sci fi thriller "Paycheck" (2003).

Thurman looked resplendent as a one-time rock group costumer-turned-record exec who falls for John Travolta's Chili Palmer in "Be Cool" (2005), the entertaining sequel to "Get Shorty"--reunited with her "Pulp Fiction" co-star, Thurman enjoyed another on-screen dance sequence with Travolta--this time more sensual and romantic then frenetic, and equally compelling. Next she went toe-to-toe with Meryl Streep in the romantic comedy "Prime" (2005) as a 37-year-old woman reeling from a divorce woking through intimacy issues with her therapist (Streep), reinvigorated by her affair with a much-younger man who happens to be her therapist's son. Then it was on to singing and dancing Mel Brooks-style alongside Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane in "The Producers: The Movie Musical" (2005) as the Broadway duo's sensual, leggy and English-challenged secretary Ulla. She then joined Luke Wilson for "Super Ex Girlfriend" (2006), in which Wilson learns his girlfriend is a superhero and breaks up with her when she gets too controlling and neurotic, prompting her to use her powers to exact revenge by tormenting and embarrassing him.