Quentin Tarantino

He has been romantically linked with a number of women including Mira Sorvino, Sofia Coppola, Allison Anders, Kathy Griffin, Uma Thurman and Didem Erol. He does not plan to marry anytime soon because he believes that this is the ‘time to make movies’.

He is best-friends with collaborator, Robert Rodriguez. He is also close to Paul Thomas Anderson, Kevin Smith and Harvey Keitel.

Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born on March 27, 1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, to Tony Tarantino, an actor and Connie McHugh, a nurse. He is of Italian-Irish-Cherokee ancestry. He was raised by his mother and stepfather, Curt Zastoupil.

He studied at Fleming Junior High School, where he took up drama classes and also studied at Narbonne High School, before he dropped out at the age of 15.

After he quit school, he attended James Best Theater Company but left it after two years.

He began working as an employee in the video rental store, ‘Video Archives’. He began to discuss movies at length with his colleagues and other customers who would come to rent films. It is believed that during this time, he was exposed to Blaxploitation films and also paid close attention to the type of movies that customers preferred to rent/purchase.

Quentin Tarantino met Lawrence Bender at a party. The latter encouraged him to write his first screenplay, which he did and called it ‘My Best Friend’s Birthday’. However, the reel of the film was destroyed in a fire and the screenplay would go on to form the basis for ‘True Romance’.

He debuted as a director with the film, ‘Reservoir Dogs’, which released in 1992. The film became an instant hit and was screened at the Sundance Film Festival the same year.

In 1993, he write the screenplay for the American romantic-crime movie, ‘True Romance’ starring Van Kilmer, Christian Slater and Gary Oldman. The following year, he wrote the screenplay for ‘Natural Born Killers’.

He had become so popular in Hollywood by now that many scriptwriters approached him for films like ‘Speed’ and ‘Men in Black’. But he refused the scripts, withdrew to Amsterdam and began working on his next big project, ‘Pulp Fiction’.

In 1994, ‘Pulp Fiction’ was released and received numerous awards for its ingenious direction and non-linear story line. It became so popular that he was nominated for the category of ‘Best Director’ for the Academy Awards.

‘Inglourious Basterds’, the war film directed by Quentin Tarantino in 2009, is one of the biggest American blockbusters till date and earned a whopping $321 million in theaters worldwide. The movie went on to receive a number of important awards including eight Academy Award nominations. The film is till date, the second highest commercially successful film in the United States and was showcased at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival.

‘Django Unchained’, released in 2012 is a spaghetti western film directed by Tarantino and earned over $424 million worldwide, which is Tarantino’s highest grossing film till date. The movie earned a number of awards and accolades including the Academy Awards and the BAFTA have and made history by becoming the only Tarantino film to be approved for official distribution in China, owing to their strict policies regarding film distribution.