NEW YORK -- Meryl Streep puts the Prime of Miss Uma Thurman in context.

In their new movie together, the 56-year-old Streep plays a frump. To suit the role, she looks older, unglamourous, matronly. Yet her ego never gets in the way, even though Thurman is a dish served sensually hot in the same scenes.

"I'm in a movie with Uma Thurman!" Streep says, spiking her words with a dramatic tone before bursting out in giggles. "Give it up, babe!"

It is easy to give it up around Thurman. At 35 and well past her awkward ingenue stage, she is a powerhouse on screen. In Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill movies, she was both sexy and lethal on her journey of bloody vengeance; in Prime, she is kittenish and coquettish, but still very much a woman taking charge of her own fate as she strikes up a new romance with a much younger man.

The gimmick in Ben Younger's romantic comedy is that the lover, played by Bryan Greenberg, happens to be Streep's son and is 14 years younger. Streep happens to be Thurman's psychiatrist, devoted to helping her client get over a life-shattering divorce. (Yes, reality bites! But more on that art-imitates-life angle later).

"From the films that I'd seen her in," Streep offers, "she presents a formidable picture. But Uma herself is more like what she is in this film. She's like that. She's very forthright and earnest. She reveals herself. She has no cover. She is really a lovely actress. And you see maybe one-eighth of what she is capable of because it's a comedy."

Call it a mutual admiration society. After Streep gives her shout-out, Thurman shows up for a press conference absolutely wired -- and absolutely charming -- while singing Streep's praises as "my hero" in Hollywood.

But it's silly time first for Uma. "Work, work, work, work ..." the over-caffeinated Thurman repeats a dozen or more times before asking whether anyone knows "those Muppet guys" who make the beeping sounds. "All righty!" she finally says. "Somebody stop me from beeping. Or do you want to see what I'll do next?"

What she does next -- or at least later in the day during a one-on-one interview with the Sun -- must be every Uma-fanboy's dream. She stretches her 6-foot frame out on the couch in a reclining position, wriggles into the cocoon of a comforter she pulled off the bed, and nestles beside me, apologizing playfully for her eccentric behaviour as she flips a river of blond tresses off her face. The woman looks radiant.

Then we talk about sex -- in the movie, in life.

"A strong physical connection with somebody is very powerful," Thurman says, grinning happily. "I don't know what it is but, however it plays out, it's kind of a communication that is pretty unquantifiable somehow. It is just different."

Thurman agrees that sexual chemistry is the "primal" part of Prime. Her character (who is supposed to be 37) and her 23-year-old lover played by Greenberg (who is really 27) defy convention and opposition to get together in the movie. Then confusion ensues. All relationships are complicated. The film is bittersweet.

"Life is full of surprises, that is for sure," Thurman says. "Things are unpredictable, to tremendous surprise sometimes."

Not that things are always going to turn bad, she says. "I think I spend too much time in life worrying about them not going well. Which is probably a dangerous habit."

Unfortunately, in her own life, things have gone badly. Her five-year marriage to actor-filmmaker Ethan Hawke, which ended with his alleged infidelity, has led to divorce proceedings that are expected to be finalized in November. It is her second divorce. At 20, she married actor Gary Oldman and then split up two years later.

The Hawke breakup came with its own drama. Thurman's brother, Mipam Thurman, made verbal threats, although he reportedly apologized to Hawke later. Reports say Thurman and Hawke are now on amicable terms, sharing parenting of their children, seven-year-old Maya Ray and three-year-old Levon Roan.

But there was a lot of pain, Thurman admits, and she is prone to sobbing -- which is why she was willing to play the victim of a bad breakup in Prime. And why she was willing to do it with such enthusiasm and emotion when she replaced original co-star Sandra Bullock, who dropped out of the project before shooting.

"I understood the character," Thurman says, "my life being the roadkill (and) public knowledge it is. You know, barely scraping the bodies off the sidewalk.

"I understood exactly what this character was going through. I knew what it's like to wake up a decade later and be single again, be alone again, and thinking that you had a plan and the plan gets derailed.

"A lot of people in America know what that feels like, too, and I thought that this was a real unsarcastic, uncynical, pretty sensitive rendering of a strong, decent but vulnerable human being in that position. And I like that a lot. So, for me, it didn't take a lot of guesswork."

In the movie, Thurman feels out of her element when dating Greenberg. In life, she has been linked romantically this year with hotelier Andre Balazs and has been photographed in public with him.

"Dating sounds terrifying!" Thurman says, without referring to Balazs. "Dating sounds just terrifying. Any relationship is better than dating, short of a black eye.

"Gawd, I don't know how anybody does it today because it seems like the culture's really changed. It just seems harder and harder to make contact. I hear from other friends of mine, single women especially, that it's very difficult. Especially for mature grownups who actually care about what happens in their relationships, who aren't just partying at spring break."

For all those people, there is a movie called Prime.

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