Date of Birth

27 March 1963, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA

Birth Name

Quentin Jerome Tarantino

Nickname

QT

Height

6' 1" (1.85 m)

The career of Quentin Tarantino instantly became the stuff of Hollywood legend. Of course, winning an Oscar, Golden Globe and numerous critics' awards for Best Original Screenplay for the groundbreaking and much-imitated "Pulp Fiction" (1994) added significantly to his luster. Not bad for a high school dropout who picked up much of his film education while working as a video store clerk. For better or worse, the entertainment press selected Tarantino as the symbol of a new generation of young, hot directors. Hailed by Variety as "the video store generation of filmmakers, these would-be auteurs learned what they know about moviemaking and film history by watching VHS tapes on television; not at film school. A minimum wage job behind a video store counter became a road to a treasure trove of cinematic expression particularly if one worked, as Tarantino did, at a well-stocked outfit like Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, CA. Cinephiles rather than cineastes, these young buffs tended to have rather catholic if idiosyncratic tastes. One could see influences of everything from arcane Hong Kong action titles to French New Wave classics in all of Tarantino's work.

Born on March 27, 1963 in Knoxville, TN, Tarantino was raised solely by his mother, Connie, a former nurse and health care executive, after his father, Tony, a sometime actor, left the family before his son was born. When Tarantino was two years old, his mother left Knoxville and settled in Torrance, CA. After dropping out of high school in the ninth grade, Tarantino held a succession of odd jobs including usher at a porn theater before finding his niche as a clerk at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, where for five years he engaged customers including many low-profile industry players with his passionate rants about film noir, Sonny Chiba and grindhouse movies. It was at Video Archives that he met future producing partner, Roger Avary, who later collaborated on several screenplays with Tarantino. In 1984, Tarantino took his first steps into filmmaking with My Best Friends Birthday, a 70-minute comedy he co-directed with Craig Hamann about a young man whose plans to do something nice for his friends birthday keep running afoul. Made over four years on a paltry budget of $5,000, Tarantinos first directing effort never officially saw the light of day in fact, only about 36-minutes survived and were shown later at film festivals once he became a success. But his trademark sharp dialogue, obscure film references and foot fetish were on display even then.

Though famous for directing, Tarantino had aspirations of being an actor too, so placed himself in a leading role for My Best Friends Birthday. He also made a dont-blink-or-youll-miss-it appearance as one of several Elvis impersonators in a 1988 episode of The Golden Girls (NBC, 1985-1992). With little money in his pocket, Tarantino was glad to get a lump sum of $700 and the subsequent residual checks, which were welcomed in lean times. Meanwhile, Tarantino and Avery were hired by producer John Langley, a regular video store customer who was impressed by their film knowledge, to work as production assistants on a Dolph Lundgren exercise video. This led to work at Cinetel Productions, where Tarantino and Avary hooked up with producer Lawrence Bender and finished the screenplay for "Reservoir Dogs, a brutally violent, yet elegantly written crime drama about the aftermath of a jewelry store heist gone bad. Originally budgeted for $35,000, the production grew to $1.5 million when Harvey Keitel who played the morally-conflicted Mr. White became enamored of the script and agreed to star. The result was a cleverly structured and stylized caper with themes of masculinity, loyalty and betrayal that benefited greatly from top notch tough-guy performances from a superior ensemble that included Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Chris Penn and Michael Madsen. The soundtrack for the film songs that meant something personal to Tarantino was almost as important to the films impact as the performances of the cast of infamous Mr.s.

Reservoir Dogs premiered at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, but was pointedly snubbed by the jury. Nonetheless, Tarantino became an overnight sensation and was lionized by some as the next Martin Scorsese albeit with liberal sprinklings of Samuel Fuller and John Woo. Suddenly, Tarantino found himself to be in high demand in Hollywood. Two scripts he co-wrote with Avary though it remained in dispute how much credit went to his writing partner were immediately snatched up and turned into films. The first True Romance (1993) was a gleefully adolescent daydream fueled by pop culture, violence and testosterone about a pair of young lovers (Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette) who flee Detroit for Los Angeles after stealing a dealers stash of cocaine. Slickly directed by Tony Scott, the film offered grandstanding performances and a glossy commercial sheen that rendered the ample violence less distressing than it was in "Reservoir Dogs. Another script, "Natural Born Killers (1994), was penned during the same burst of creativity with Avary, and was in some ways an off-shoot of True Romance; in the sense that it depicted a cross-country journey by two young lovers (this time Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) on the lam. Oliver Stone directed the hyper-kinetic thriller with a heavy hand from a script that he had extensively rewritten, much to Tarantinos annoyance. Never one to mince words from the jump, Tarantino subsequently criticized Stone, saying publicly how much he hated the movie.

Nearing the top of his game, the frenetic Tarantino escaped to Amsterdam, where he took in the local wares and penned the drafts for what became both his signature film and a pop culture phenomenon, Pulp Fiction (1994). Returning to a familiar urban landscape characterized by themes of trust and betrayal, and inhabited by gangsters given to low-level postulating, Pulp Fiction boasted another A-list cast including Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Samuel L Jackson, Uma Thurman and Christopher Walken. The darkly comic neo-noir told a series of intertwining tales that revolved around a pair of philosophizing hit men (Travolta and Jackson) who run into trouble after recovering a mysterious briefcase, an aging prize fighter (Willis) who incurs the wrath of a mob boss (Ving Rhames) after failing to throw a fight, and said mob boss girlfriend (Thurman) who has too much of a good time with one of the hit men (Travolta). The film premiered to rabid acclaim and a small degree of controversy at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, where Tarantino grabbed hold of the Palme d'Or. In its theatrical release, Pulp Fiction was a surprising box office success, grossing over $200 million internationally, while earning several Academy Award nominations and a win for Best Original Screenplay. Many felt for some time that Pulp Fiction was robbed of the Best Picture win, losing instead to the feel-good Robert Zemeckis film, Forrest Gump (1994).

Although Tarantino is best known for his work behind the camera, he appeared in his own films Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Four Rooms, andDeath Proof as minor characters, and co-starred alongside George Clooney in From Dusk Till Dawn. He has also appeared on the small screen in the first and third seasons of the TV show Alias, as McKenas Cole. Tarantino once played an Elvis impersonator on an episode of The Golden Girls.[27] He played cameo roles in Desperado (directed by his friend Robert Rodriguez), and Little Nicky (as a crazy, blind, apocalypse preacher). In 1998, he turned his attention to the Broadway stage, where he starred in a revival of Wait Until Dark. In November 2006, an episode of the Sundance Channel's Iconoclasts features Quentin Tarantino interviewing and spending time with singer Fiona Apple. Tarantino appeared briefly in the beginning of Spike Lee's film Girl 6. Tarantino had substantial screen-time in Grindhouse's double-features, Death Proof and Planet Terror, where he respectively takes on the roles of Warren, a bartender, and Rapist No. 1, an infected member of a rogue military unit. He starred as Johnny Destiny in the film Destiny Turns on the Radio. In 2007 he had a small role as Ringo in the Takashi Miike film Sukiyaki Western Django. In the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds Tarantino acted a minor role of a German soldier first to be scalped by the titular Basterds, as well as an American GI with a small speaking part portrayed in the propaganda film "Nation's Pride" that appears within the film.

Tarantino's mother allowed him to quit middle school at age 15, to attend an acting class full time. Tarantino gave up acting while attending the acting school, saying that he admired directors more than actors. Tarantino also worked in a video rental store before becoming a filmmaker, paid close attention to the types of films people liked to rent, and has cited that experience as inspiration for his directorial career.

Tarantino has been romantically linked with numerous entertainers, including actress Mira Sorvino, directors Allison Anders and Sofia Coppola, actresses Julie Dreyfus and Shar Jackson and comedians Kathy Griffin and Margaret Cho. There have also been rumors about his relationship with Uma Thurman, whom he has referred to as his "muse". However, Tarantino has stated that their relationship is strictly platonic. He has never married and has no children. Tarantino recently stated "I'm not saying that I'll never get married or have a kid before I'm 60. But I've made a choice, so far, to go on this road alone. Because this is my time to make movies."

One of Tarantino's closest friends is fellow director Robert Rodriguez. Their biggest collaborations have been From Dusk Till Dawn (written by Tarantino, directed by Rodriguez), Four Rooms (they both wrote and directed segments of the film), Sin City and Grindhouse. It was Tarantino who suggested that Rodriguez name the final part of his El Mariachi trilogy Once Upon a Time in Mexico, as an homage to the titles Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America by Sergio Leone. They are both members of A Band Apart, a production company that also features directors John Woo and Luc Besson. Rodriguez scored Kill Bill: Volume 2 for one dollar, and the favor was returned when Tarantino directed a scene in Rodriguez's 2005 film Sin City for the same fee.

He was thanked in the liner notes of Nirvana's final studio album In Utero although the spelling of his name is incorrect. Tarantino returned the favor by thanking Nirvana on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, along with the message "RIP Kurt". It was thought that Kurt Cobain and his wife Courtney Love rejected an offer to act in Pulp Fiction as Lance & Jody. However Tarantino denied this rumor and claimed he had no real connection to Love and Cobain other than the fact that the couple liked Reservoir Dogs.

Tarantino has said that he plans to retire from filmmaking at age 60, to focus on writing novels and film literature. He also is skeptical of the film industry going digital saying "If it actually gets to the place where you can't show 35mm film in theatres anymore and everything is digital projection, I won't even make it to 60.

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