Quentin Tarantino Calls Uma Thurman's 'Kill Bill' Accident 'Biggest Regret Of My Life'

Uma Thurman has added her voice to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement. In an op-ed with The New York Times, the actress spoke out about being sexually abused by producer Harvey Weinstein and facing professional abuse from director Quentin Tarentino. Thurman says that the Kill Bill director forced her to do a dangerous car driving stunt in the movie that left her injured. 

“Quentin came in my trailer and didn’t like to hear no, like any director,” she says. “He was furious because I’d cost them a lot of time. But I was scared. He said: ‘I promise you the car is fine. It’s a straight piece of road.’” He told her to drive at 40 miles per hour. "But that was a deathbox that I was in. The seat wasn’t screwed down properly. It was a sand road and it was not a straight road.” 

Thurman did the stunt that left her seriously injured. “The steering wheel was at my belly and my legs were jammed under me,” she says. “I felt this searing pain and thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m never going to walk again,’” she says. “When I came back from the hospital in a neck brace with my knees damaged and a large massive egg on my head and a concussion, I wanted to see the car and I was very upset. Quentin and I had an enormous fight, and I accused him of trying to kill me. And he was very angry at that, I guess understandably, because he didn’t feel he had tried to kill me.”

Video from that incident was shared in the article by The New York Times.

“I am guilty, for putting her in that car, but not the way that people are saying I am guilty of it,” Tarantino tells Deadline. “It’s the biggest regret of my life, getting her to do that stunt.

In the article, the director claims that he never got to tell The New York Times his side of the story so he was vilified. "I ended up taking the hit and taking the heat." 

He did admit that the crash affected his relationship with Thurman, professionally and personally. "It affected me and Uma for the next two to three years. It wasn’t like we didn’t talk. But a trust was broken. A trust broken over a year of shooting, of us doing really gnarly stuff. Doing really big stunt stuff. I wanted her to do as much as possible and we were trying to take care of her and we pulled it off. She didn’t get hurt. And then the last four days, in what we thought would be a simple driving shot, almost kills her."

[Photo: Getty Images]