Quentin Tarantino: The Actor
While being arguably one of the most influential directors of all time, unlike many other top Hollywood directors, Tarantino’s acting career has also attracted some attention.
Claiming to have been taught the craft by the actor James Best, Tarantino's first on-screen performance was in the 1987 black and white film, "My Best Friend's Birthday". The complete film, also written by Tarantino, unfortunately never saw the light of day after a lab accident resulted in the final reel being burned.
Following this setback, and after realizing his inexperience in the acting world, Tarantino lied on his resume to help land auditions. The aspiring actor gave himself acting credits for the 1978 film "Dawn of the Dead", in which he looked strikingly similar to a biker; as well as 1987's "King Lear", a film that Hollywood knew little about.
The resume enhancements paid off, and Tarantino landed a role on an episode of "The Golden Girls" as an Elvis impersonator and later as an asylum guard in the 1992 film "Eddie Presley."
Tarantino’s first more significant role came in 1992’s “Reservoir Dogs,” which also marked his entrance onto the scene as a director. Tarantino took the role of Mr. Brown, one of seven strangers working together to pull off a heist. This began a trend of Tarantino writing himself into many of his later films. Proving just how small these cameos could be, his only appearance in his 1997 film, Jackie Brown, was as the electronic voice on the lead character’s answering machine.
In his 1994 hit "Pulp Fiction", Tarantino cast himself as Jimmie Dimmick, a man who helps Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta’s characters stash a dead body.
Following the success of his first two films, Tarantino wrote and directed the segment “The Man From Hollywood in the anthology comedy “Four Rooms”, in which he also ironically played the role as a hot, new director celebrating a breakout success.
As a favor to his friend and fellow director Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino appeared briefly as a joke-telling cowboy in 1995's "Desperado”, and then starred opposite George Clooney as criminal Richard Gecko in 1996’s “From Dusk Till Dawn”. Later in their careers, Rodriguez and Tarantino would team-up as directors for 2007’s double feature Grindhouse. In Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, Tarantino played a mercenary soldier turned zombie, and in his own film Death Proof, Tarantino appeared as a bartender.
In Adam Sandler’s 2000 off-beat comedy, Little Nicky, Tarantino appeared as a memorable, and accident-prone street preacher. Tarantino was also reunited on the set with actor Harvey Keitel who had appeared in both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Tarantino has claimed that Keitel has been his favorite ever since he was 16.
Branching away from film acting, Tarantino appeared on the first season of Alias in 2002 as McKenas Cole, an agent turned traitor. The role appealed to Tarantino as it featured common threads from his own films, such as a heist, philosophical dialogue and a torture scene. He also voiced the character Master Moloch on the cartoon series “Duck Dodgers,” a character that had been modeled on his own character Pai Mei from “Kill Bill.”
Truly proving that he had made a name for himself as a bonafide actor, at the insistence of director Takashi Miike, Tarantino appeared as a gun-slinging cowboy in the film “Sukiyaki Western Django”. Miike said that his film needed Tarantino’s unique cinematic flare as “a guy who doesn’t play by Hollywood Rules."
