This project spent a decade in development from the time you and Quentin started talking about it on the set of "Pulp Fiction" to the time of release. What were your first impressions of the script when you finally read it?

When I first read the script one of the things that really bothered me was that I wasn't sure if I really wanted to kill Bill. I wasn't sure. I think it's dramatically complicated and I thought if there's ambivalence about whether or not I want to kill Bill then let's kill the movie. Then I found there was room for all of those things. There was room for ambivalence. There was room for heartbreak. There was room for revenge. I used to say to David Carradine on the set that I couldn't wait to kill him because it took so long to get to end of this film with all the shooting we did in all the locations.

It's definitely new to see a woman be so relentless in a film. Were there any strong female or even male performances that helped you create this performance?

There were several. Certainly Pam Grier in "Coffy" and Gena Rowlands in "Gloria" were inspirations. Those two women were able to be women while being violent and aggressive. They were convincing and powerful and vulnerable all at once.

Looking at the script, I felt like the challenge there was pretty big. Quentin didn't set it up for you to feel too sorry for my character or really too supportive of her. He made it hard to carry this load. Certainly this character wouldn't pander for sympathy. There was none of that. On top of that, it's incredibly silent. There's just not a lot of dialogue or talking about emotions. It was a pretty skinny bag of tools that I had for this journey.

I was also inspired by Mel Gibson in the first two "Mad Max" films. It was a great warrior character who is incredibly silent and manages without the comic book side of Quentin's work. You really feel like you know him even though he doesn't really say anything. And there was Clint Eastwood in the Sergio Leone movies. He doesn't really say much either. His entire performance is in his eyes.

Quentin would send me a Bruce Lee tape and I'd think that the kind of performance Lee gave could never happen for me because his movement was so beautiful. It was hard but I kept working.

You have some incredible fight scenes with other women in the two "Kill Bill" films. Both Vivica Fox and Daryl Hannah get into it with you. What was the atmosphere on set when you were doing that? Were you deadly serious or were you laughing between takes?

It was pretty fun. It was pretty unpleasant sometimes but for the most part it was hilarious. They're both great to work with. It was pretty ridiculous at times to me to think of Daryl and I - these two skinny blonde girls - beating each other up out in the middle of nowhere.

Do women react to you differently now that they've seen you be so tough and bad ass onscreen?

I don't know if they react to me differently. I do know that some high school girls were referring to defending themselves as "doing an Uma" on that person. They were going to go "Uma" on them. I thought it was hilarious that in the vernacular of these young girls they were referring to me in that way. And it's not that I advocate violence but there is that fine line between self-confidence and aggression. Little things like that come up. And then you see people at Halloween dressed in the kind of yellow tracksuit that my character wears in the film.

How do you see the way we deal with violence in our culture and why do you think there's so much discussion of the violence in this film?

Personally I don't like real life violence. I think that violence is such a huge part of our culture. The appropriateness of violence in film is completely dependent on its execution. I'm one of those people who can't even look at violence onscreen generally. As a mother I hate violence. I also really hate this kind of weird, American phenomenon of having a huge tolerance for real life violence but making such a big deal about creative expressions of violence. There's also such indifference towards violence against women and children. It takes major cases in which people are killed for funding to be given to stop this sort of thing and then the funding goes away the minute people forget about it. It's amazing to me that so much funding goes toward trying to stop creative expressions of violence and the real problems in real life almost never get the attention and funding they need.