Quentin Jerome Tarantino ( TARR-ən-TEE-noh; born March 27, 1963) is an American filmmaker, actor, and author. His films are characterized by graphic violence, extended dialogue often featuring much profanity, and references to popular culture. His work has earned a cult following alongside critical and commercial success, and he has been named by some as the most influential director of his generation. Tarantino has received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards, as well as nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and five Grammy Awards. His films have collectively grossed more than $1.9 billion worldwide.
Tarantino began his career by having a number of jobs through the 1980s, including writing several screenplays. During that time, he made his directorial debut with the independent crime film Reservoir Dogs (1992), which became an immediate hit. His second film, the crime comedy-drama Pulp Fiction (1994), was a critical and commercial success and received numerous awards, including the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and Tarantino's first Academy Award, for Best Original Screenplay. The film has been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Afterward, he wrote and starred in the action horror film From Dusk till Dawn (1996). Tarantino's third film as director, Jackie Brown (1997), paid homage to blaxploitation films.
Subsequently, Tarantino wrote and directed the martial arts films Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), with both volumes combined regarded as a single film. He then made the exploitation-slasher film Death Proof (2007), which was part of a double feature with From Dusk till Dawn director Robert Rodriguez, released under the collective title Grindhouse. His sixth film, Inglourious Basterds (2009), followed an alternate account of World War II. He followed this with two Western films: Django Unchained (2012)—a slave revenge Spaghetti Western which won him his second Academy Award, also for Best Original Screenplay—and The Hateful Eight (2015), a revisionist Western thriller which opened to audiences with a roadshow release.
Tarantino's ninth and most recent film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), was a comedy-drama set in the late 1960s about the transition of Old Hollywood to New Hollywood; he made his debut novel, a novelization of the film, in 2021. Tarantino next wrote the film's standalone sequel, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth (2026), which he chose not to direct, instead handing the film to David Fincher. He has tentative plans for his tenth film to be his last before retiring from filmmaking.
Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born on March 27, 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee, the only child of Connie McHugh and aspiring actor Tony Tarantino, who left the family before his son's birth. He has claimed to have Cherokee ancestry through his mother, who was also of Irish descent, while his father was Italian-American. He was named in part after Quint Asper, Burt Reynolds's character in the TV series Gunsmoke. Tarantino's mother met his father during a trip to Los Angeles; after a brief marriage and divorce, she left Los Angeles and moved to Knoxville, where her parents lived, and returned to Los Angeles with her son in 1966.
Tarantino's mother married musician Curtis Zastoupil soon after arriving in Los Angeles, and the family moved to nearby Torrance, California. Zastoupil accompanied Tarantino to numerous film screenings, while his mother allowed him to see more mature movies, such as Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Deliverance (1972). After his mother divorced Zastoupil in 1973 and received a misdiagnosis of Hodgkin's lymphoma, Tarantino was again sent to live with his grandparents in Knoxville. Less than a year later, he returned to Torrance.
At the age of 14, Tarantino wrote one of his earliest works, a screenplay called Captain Peachfuzz and the Anchovy Bandit that was based on the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit. He later revealed that his mother had ridiculed his writing skills when he was younger, and he subsequently vowed never to share any of his future wealth with her. As a 15-year-old, he was grounded by his mother for shoplifting Elmore Leonard's novel The Switch from a Kmart. He was allowed to leave only to attend the Torrance Community Theater, where he participated in such plays as Two Plus Two Makes Sex and Romeo and Juliet. The same year, he dropped out of Narbonne High School in Harbor City.
1986–1993: Early jobs and screenplays
Through the 1980s, Tarantino had a number of jobs. After lying about his age, he worked as an usher at an adult movie theater in Torrance, called the Pussycat Theater. He spent time as a recruiter in the aerospace industry, and for five years he worked at Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California. He was well known in the local community for his film knowledge and video recommendations; Tarantino stated, "When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, 'No, I went to films.'" In 1986, Tarantino was employed in his first Hollywood job, working with Video Archives colleague Roger Avary, as production assistants on Dolph Lundgren's exercise video, Maximum Potential.
Before working at Video Archives, Tarantino co-wrote Love Birds In Bondage with Scott Magill. Tarantino would go on to produce and direct the short film. Magill committed suicide in 1987, after which all film shot was destroyed. Later, Tarantino attended acting classes at the James Best Theatre Company, where he met several of his eventual collaborators for his next film. In 1987, Tarantino co-wrote and directed My Best Friend's Birthday (1987). It was left uncompleted, but some of its dialogue was included in True Romance.
The following year, he played an Elvis impersonator in "Sophia's Wedding: Part 1", an episode in the fourth season of The Golden Girls, which was broadcast on November 19, 1988. Tarantino recalled that the pay he received for the part helped support him during the preproduction of Reservoir Dogs; he estimated he was initially paid about $650 but went on to receive about $3,000 in residuals over three years because the episode was frequently rerun due to it being on a "best of..." lineup.
After meeting Lawrence Bender at a friend's barbecue, Tarantino discussed with him about an unwritten dialogue-driven heist film. Bender encouraged Tarantino to write the screenplay, which he wrote in three and a half weeks and presented to Bender unformatted. Impressed with the script, Bender managed to forward it through contacts to director Monte Hellman. Hellman cleaned up the screenplay and helped secure funding from Richard N. Gladstein at Live Entertainment (which later became Artisan, now known as Lionsgate). Harvey Keitel read the script and also contributed to the budget, taking a role as co-producer and also playing a major part in the picture. In January 1992, it was released as Tarantino's crime thriller Reservoir Dogs—which he wrote, directed, and acted in as Mr. Brown—and screened at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was an immediate hit, receiving a positive response from critics.
Tarantino's screenplay True Romance was optioned and the film was eventually released in 1993. The second script that Tarantino sold was for the film Natural Born Killers, which was revised by Dave Veloz, Richard Rutowski and director Oliver Stone. Tarantino was given story credit and stated in an interview that he wished the film well, but later disowned the final film. Tarantino also did an uncredited rewrite on It's Pat (1994). Other films where he was an uncredited screenwriter include Crimson Tide (1995) and The Rock (1996).
1993–1999: Breakthrough and acclaim
Following the success of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino was approached by major film studios and offered projects that included Speed (1994) and Men in Black (1997), but he instead retreated to Amsterdam to work on his script for Pulp Fiction. Tarantino wrote, directed, and acted in the dark comedy crime film Pulp Fiction in 1994, maintaining the graphic depiction of violence from his earlier film as well as the non-linear storylines. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Tarantino was nominated for Best Director and won Best Original Screenplay, which he shared with Roger Avary. Tarantino also won the Palme d'Or for the film at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. The film grossed over $200 million and earned positive reviews.