Uma Thurman is a study in beauty and contradiction, with a see-saw pattern chart that allows her to swing from ethereal and statuesque splendor to almost gnome-like gawkiness and dysmorphia. How can one person pull off both sides of this picture?

The beauty part is easy. She’s got the classic Venus-Mars signature of Hollywood film charisma that makes so many movie stars sparkle their way through the lens into fame and fortune. And in the tenth house, it’s a veritable flag above her six-foot frame, so you can be sure everyone is going to know about it. She’s made for her part of actress/model rep for Lancome and Louis Vuitton, keeping her in the spotlight even offscreen. Yet, there is something extra mysterious here, with Neptune opposing that signature which puts a soft focus of fantasy on her energy, something spiritual that may also link back to her Buddhist scholar father and a mom who once married Timothy Leary.

Yet, with that Venus-Mars square her Ascendant, she can just as easily look like a physical misfit, with size 11 feet and the ability to project madness and a body and soul out of control in the likes of Kill Bill or Hysterical Blindness. It is as if she can turn just a slight angle away and there is another person revealed with an utterly different set of proportions. With Saturn conjunct the Sun and a cool Aquarian Moon, she has a unique ability to distance herself from and control a multifaceted image that could only be called blonde chiaroscuro. Uranus tightly trine the Venus-Mars allows her an edgy command that borders on the preternatural.

Current events: Preternatural is even more where she’s headed, with a part in 2008’s subterranean alien thriller The Swarm. She’s in for big changes that may not have hit the press yet, as she’s just passing a progressed New Moon with her progressed Ascendant changing to Libra, with a transiting Saturn to her natal Ascendant adding yet another touch of mutable darkness. Watch for an even more beautiful incarnation, if that’s possible…