QUENTIN TARANTINO BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY:
Director, producer, actor, screenwriter, cinematographer Quentin Tarantino was born March 27, 1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee to actor/musician Tony Tarantino and nurse Connie McHugh. His father, Tony, left the family before he was born. When he was two years old, his mother moved him to Torrance, California. After dropping out of high school in ninth grade, Tarantino attended an acting class full time at the James Best Theater Lake in Toluca Lake. He also worked various odd jobs, including a stint as an usher at an adult movie theater, before finding a clerk position at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach. It was here that he worked with Roger Avary, who shared the same passion for film as Tarantino, and they even worked on screenplays together. He sold one of them, “True Romance”, to director Tony Scott, who would make it into a film in 1993. They wrote another screenplay, “Natural Born Killers” (which was derived from “True Romance”), but were also unable to get enough investors to actually produce the picture.
As a result, they, too, sold the rights to the film.
He finally made his own movie in 1987, “My Best Friend’s Birthday”. Next the filmmaker used the money from “True Romance” to make “Reservoir Dogs”, which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992. The beautifully written film about a failed jewelry heist enchanted audiences at the festival, and word about Tarantino was quickly spread. He consequently became a known name in Hollywood. His screenplay “True Romance” was released soon after, featuring actors Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette playing lovers who are fleeing to escape punishment for stealing cocaine.
At the top of his game, Tarantino withdrew to Amsterdam to begin a new script. The result, “Pulp Fiction” (1994), was an unpredictable thriller interweaving the lives of various characters. Released at the Cannes Film Festival, its A-list cast (John Travolta, Uma Therman, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis) and pop culture references won it the esteemed Palme D’Or Award. With its theatrical release, the box office sales were through the roof and it earned seven Academy Award nominations. Tarantino took home the Oscar for Best Screenplay.
After the picture’s success, the filmmaker could be seen everywhere – as actor/writer/director/producer of “Four Rooms” (1995), as an actor in Robert Rodriguez’s sequel to “El Mariachi” (1992), “Desperado” (1995), independent features like “Sleep With Me” (1994) and “Somebody to Love” (1994), low budget studio films, and in various cameo appearances on television and talk shows. In 1996 he served as screenwriter and executive producer for George Clooney’s “From Dusk Till Dawn”, as well as starred opposite the actor.
Tarantino’s third feature film was an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch, titled “Jack Brown” (1997). The crime thriller, a tribute to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s, garnered favorable reviews, although it was not as well received as his previous work. His plan was to next make a film called Inglorious Basterds, but instead chose to work on a series of ‘revenge’ flicks. “Kill Bill: Vol. 1” (2003) and “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” (2004) follow a former female assassin (Uma Therman) who hunts for those involved in an attack on her and her wedding party, so that she can kill them. The highly graphic and violent films, although over deadline and budget, made for exciting cinema. Some critics hailed his work as brilliant, while others criticized the gore. Still, they turned a profit.
Tarantino’s next endeavor was the segment called “Death Proof” (2007) in a collaboration with director Robert Rodriguez called “Grindhouse” (2007), a tribute to shady, sleazy, rundown inner-city theaters of the 1970s. Critics and audiences weren’t quite sure how to receive the film, and thus it failed at the box office. He returned to his script about World War II, which he released in 2009 as “Inglourious Basterds”. The picture, starring Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth, and Mike Myers, follows a group of Jewish-American soldiers fighting Nazis in Nazi-occupied France. It opened to very positive reviews, had the number one spot at the box office, and garnered eight Academy Award nods (including two for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay). In the United States and worldwide, it became Tarantino’s highest grossing film.
The filmmaker is currently working on two more movies, a western drama titled “Django Unchained” (2012) and the third installment in his series, “Kill Bill: Vol. 3”.
Filmography
2014 Kill Bill: Vol. 3
2012 Django Unchained
2010 Coming Home
2009 Inglourious Basterds
2008 Hell Ride
2007 Diary of the Dead
2007 Sukiyaki Western Django
2007 Planet Terror
2007 Death Proof
2007 Grindhouse
2007 Hostel: Part II
2007 Planet Terror
2007 Hostel: Part II
2006 Freedom's Fury
2005 Duck Dodgers
2005 Daltry Calhoun
2005 CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
2005 Sin City
2005 Hostel
2005 The Protector
2004 My Name Is Modesty: A Modesty Blaise Adventure
2004 Jimmy Kimmel Live!
2004 Kill Bill: Vol. 2
2003 Kill Bill: Vol. 1
2002 Hero
2002 Alias
2000 Little Nicky
1999 From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter
1999 From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money
1998 God Said, 'Ha!'
1997 Jackie Brown
1996 Curdled
1996 Girl 6
1996 From Dusk Till Dawn
1995 Four Rooms
1995 ER
1995 Dance Me to the End of Love
1995 Desperado
1995 Destiny Turns on the Radio
1995 All-American Girl
1994 Somebody to Love
1994 Sleep with Me
1994 The Coriolis Effect
1994 Pulp Fiction
1994 Natural Born Killers
1993 True Romance
1993 Killing Zoe
1993 Iron Monkey
1992 Reservoir Dogs
1992 Eddie Presley
1991 Past Midnight
1989 Vegetables
1988 The Golden Girls
1987 Maximum Potential
1987 My Best Friend's Birthday
1983 Love Birds in Bondage
