Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino (born 27.3.1963)

Quentin Tarantino is an American film director and screenwriter who rose to fame with the release of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction

Quentin Tarantino: Childhood

Quentin Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His mother, Connie Zastoupil, was a nurse and his father, Tony Tarantino, an American-Italian, was an actor and musican.

Tarantino dropped out of high school in California and joined the James Best Theatre Company. Aged 22, he began working at Manhattan Beach Video Archives, a movie rental store.

Quentin Tarantino: Film Career

Tarantino's screen-writing and directorial career began after he met Lawrence Bender at a Hollywood party. Bender encouraged him to write a screenplay and three and a half weeks later, Reservoir Dogs was written. The director Monte Hellman aided Tarantino in securing funding; Harvey Keitel read the script and pledged his own involvement. Keitel not only appeared in the film, but also helped fund it and co-produced it.

Quentin Tarantino: Key Films & Significant Moments

Tarantino's next film of note, following Reservoir Dogs, was True Romance, for which he wrote the screenplay. The film starred Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette.

Natural Born Killers was another Tarantino-penned cult hit. The director, Oliver Stone, made a number of alterations to the script that Quentin was unhappy with, yet he was still approached by a number of Hollywood bigwigs to work on projects such as Men In Black and Speed. He turned down the work.

Tarantino's next major project was writing the script for Pulp Fiction, which starred Uma Thurman, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel. The film was another huge hit and won the 'Palme D'Or' award at 1994's Cannes Film Festival.

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino have worked on a number of projects together, including From Dusk Till Dawn. As well as writing the script for the film, Tarantino also starred in it.

Continuing his homage to blaxploitation movies, Tarantino wrote and directed the screen version of Jackie Brown. Released in 1997, the film featured performances from Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro.

During the making of Pulp Fiction, Uma Thurman and Quentin Tarantino had devised a plot centered around a character known as 'The Bride'. Based on a number of cinematic plot and stylistic traditions, including Italian horror films (giallo), Japanese period cinema (Jidaigeki) and Chinese martial arts (Wuxia), the story became the two-part blockbuster Kill Bill.

In 2007, another Tarantino / Rodriguez collaboration was unleashed. Based on the tradition of low-budget 'grindhouse' movies, Grindhouse featured two short films. Tarantino's contribution was Death Proof whilst Rodriguez's was entitled Planet Terror.

Quentin has been credited for his work on a number of other films, including Eli Roth's Hostel (as producer) and Sin City (he was 'Special Guest Director' for one sequence of the film: a scene between Benicio del Toro and Clive Owen).

Quentin Tarantino: Television Work

Tarantino directed 'Motherhood', an episode from 1995's series of ER. 10 years later, he also directed the finale to the fifth season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Quentin Tarantino: The Businessman

Tarantino started up Rolling Thunder Pictures in 1995, with the help of Miramax. Rolling Thunder has released Chungking Express, Switchblade Sisters and Detroit 9000 among others.

Quentin Tarantino: Personal Life

Quentin Tarantino has been rumoured to have had relationships with a number of actresses and high-profile celebrities, such as Mira Sorvino, Julie Dreyfus, Sofia Coppola, Shar Jackson and even Uma Thurman.