Oscar Nominee’s Buddhist Monk Father Dies at 84

KMazur / WireImageRobert Thurman, the Buddhist scholar, translator, and father of actress Uma Thurman, died Tuesday morning at his home in Woodstock, New York, aged 84. Born in New York City in 1941, Thurman became one of America’s foremost interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism, holding Columbia University’s Je Tsongkhapa chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies across three decades before stepping down in 2019. He was widely believed to be the first Westerner the Dalai Lama ordained into the Tibetan Buddhist monastic tradition, a path he embraced in the 1960s after an accident cost him the sight in one eye, prompting him to leave Harvard and travel overland to India. After three years as a monk, he returned to lay life, married Nena von Schlebrügge, a Swedish-German model, and raised five children, including Uma. Time named him one of its 25 Most Influential Americans in 1997, and India honored him with the Padma Shri in 2020. He co-founded the New York nonprofit Tibet House US in 1987 alongside actor Richard Gere and composer Philip Glass. Tibet House US, which announced his death, said the family had requested privacy.Read it at Daily MailRead more at The Daily Beast.