Quentin Tarantino's Biography

Quentin Tarantino was born on March 27, 1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of a 16 year old nursing student Connie and a 21 year old law student & aspiring actor Tony. Connie named him after Burt Reynolds' character Quint in 'Gunsmoke'. When Quentin was 2, they moved to South Los Angeles which is where Quentin grew up. His mother took him to the cinema from an early age, he saw 'Carnal Knowledge' at the age of 8 and 'Deliverance' at the age of 9. From this early introduction Tarantino fell in love with the cinema and went at every opportunity. At the age of 22 he landed a job in Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California where he & Roger Avary spent all day watching, discussing and recommending videos. Quentin made his first (unfinished) film in 1986, 'My Best Friend's Birthday', written with his acting class friend Craig Hamann, and followed this up by writing his first script, 'True Romance'a year later By 1988, Tarantino had written his 2nd script, 'Natural Born Killers' & in 1990 he sold the script for 'True Romance' for $30,000. He decided to use the money to make his third script 'Reservoir Dogs' on 16mm and in black and white with his friends in the leading roles. It was at about this point Tarantino left the video store to go do rewrites for CineTel a small Hollywood production company - it was at this time he met Lawrence Bender and struck lucky; Bender was attending acting class with Peter Flood who was divorced from acting teacher Lily Parker & knew Harvey Keitel from the Actors Studio. Keitel saw the script & was impressed enough to raise some more finance, act in the film and help Tarantino cast the main roles. At this point, producers Monte Hellman and Richard Gladstein also joined the project. In 1991, Tarantino filmed some scenes at Sundance, playing the role Mr White & Steve Buscemi playing Mr Pink. These scenes were shown to various film people to comment on and the group containing Terry Gilliam were particularly impressed. "Reservoir Dogs" finally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, in 1992, before appearing at various festivals around the World. Miramax picked the film up for distribution after Sundance and it was released in the US later in 1992 and in the UK on January 8 1993. Tarantino traveled around the various film festivals in '92 promoting his film & writing his next script, "Pulp Fiction" which went on to win the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1994. It finally opened amidst incredible hype and critical acclaim on October 14 in the US and October 21 in the UK. "Pulp Fiction" went on to become one of the most highly acclaimed movies of 1994 making over $200, 000, 000 worldwide and picking up 7 Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Director (Quentin), Best Actor (John Travolta), Best Supporting Actor (Samuel L. Jackson) Supporting Actress (Uma Thurman), Best Film Editing (Sally Menke) and winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. (Quentin). Riding on the success of Pulp Fiction, Tarantino has gone on to be a major Hollywood player Producing, Distributing films through Miramax with an arm of a company called "Rolling Thunder", Co-Directing & Co-Writing "Four Rooms" an anthology type feature film, Directing an episode of "ER", a popular TV show, and making appearances in movies and TV.

His latest film, "Jackie Brown", opened to great success, making more cash in the opening weekend that it cost to make the film & showing up on numerous critics top ten lists. Also, it got 2 Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress (Pam Grier) & Best Actor (Samuel L. Jackson), not to mention an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor (Robert Forster). "Jackie Brown" is no "Pulp Fiction", but it actually comes close. I liked it better than "Reservoir Dogs." I doubt he can ever top "Pulp Fiction," but as long as he can keep making films as good as "Jackie Brown" that's close enough for me!