Uma Thurman is glad Kill Bill turned out to be two installments. Vol. 1 of the action flick was released in October; Vol. 2 opens Friday.

The model-turned-actress wouldn't tell Newsday whether director Quentin Tarantino planned it that way all along, but the footage always felt like two movies to her.

"The first film was like a giant dance number," she says. "This one is much more focused."

Thurman sees plenty of action as an assassin out for revenge against a hit man who tried to kill her, and she credits Tarantino with letting her play the part.

"He's certainly given me really incredibly physical, very freeing parts," Thurman says of Tarantino, who also cast her in 1994's Pulp Fiction.

"Quentin's work is kind of a genre unto itself," she says. "And it's an amazing thing to be intrinsically a part of that."