The It List

The It Girl
Uma Thurman

Age: 27 Why her?: Forget that she's one half of the most notorious one-liner in Oscar history. The willowy, six-foot-tall, sleepy-eyed actress is the unrivaled queen of Hollywood's ethereal realm. Named after a sexy Hindu goddess, Thurman has a dreamy, Venus-like look that can be played as wistfully romantic (see: Beautiful Girls, Dangerous Liaisons, Henry & June), stylishly aloof (a la the cocaine-sniffing moll in Pulp Fiction), brassy (as the vixenish Poison Ivy in this month's Batman & Robin), or just plain spaced-out (check out Even Cowgirls Get the Blues or, better yet, the upcoming futuristic drama Gattaca). How she does it: ''Decomposition and recomposition,'' says Thurman, sounding more like her father, Robert, who teaches Indo-Tibetan Buddhism at Columbia University (Uma's mom, Nena, is a model-turned-psychologist who was once married to LSD guru Timothy Leary). Translation: ''When I read a script, I pull the character apart. 'Why is the character saying this? What would she look like when she's angry?' Then maybe I'll watch a movie. I watched some Mae West to get ready for Batman & Robin — before coming back to try to make the character my own.'' Creative crutch: Pilates, a vigorous workout of stretching and strengthening moves. ''On a good week when I'm not busy,'' she says, ''I'll try to do it three or four times.'' She also smokes. A lot. What's next: In Les Miserables, shooting in Prague, she plays the unemployed Fantine, a street urchin driven to prostitution to support her child. She's already wrapped production as the star-trooping Irene opposite boyfriend Ethan Hawke in this fall's Gattaca. And she's currently fine-tuning the part of Emma Peel for a film version of the super-sleek '60s series The Avengers.

Dennis Muren
F/X Revolutionary

Age: 50 Why him?: He's to digital special effects what Edison is to electricity. Already a prominent effects Oscar winner for his work on E.T., Return of the Jedi, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Muren took a sabbatical from his job as senior effects supervisor at George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic F/X factory in 1989 to examine computer graphics technology. When he returned a year later, he wound up changing the look of movies forever. Working in then uncharted territory, Muren figured out astoundingly believable ways to insert animated objects and characters into Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Jurassic Park, Casper, and, most recently, The Lost World: Jurassic Park. How he does it: Muren, who says he knows he's done well if the audience ''walks out of the theater, turns around, and gets right back in line again,'' says it all boils down to the details. ''It's small touches that really sell effects, and they take trial and error to find. Things like, how the light bounces off a stegosaurus' fins.'' With his intensive knowledge of real-life cinematography (he's an ex-cameraman himself), Muren strives to make the CG shots he helps design ''look like they were done by a camera operator just struggling to keep the creatures in the frame. You can't treat these as planned things, or they look too fake.'' Creative crutch: Taking two months off between punishingly intense assignments to examine ''where we can go next that will surprise the audience.'' What's next: Possibly consulting on the computer-effects-laden new Star Wars movies.