The Life and Films of Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Jerome Tarantino, an American film director and two Oscar-winning screenwriter, was born on March 27, 1963. The director quickly became famous for his bold use of dialogs and has brought a fresh breath to American cliché movies. Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Tony Tarantino, an actor and musician of Italian origin. His mother is Connie McHugh of half-Irish , who got married with the musician Curt Zastoupil after Tarantino was born.

Starting kindergarten in San Gabriel Valley in 1968, Tarantino moved to El Segundo with his family in 1971. Here he attended Hawthorne Christian School and dropped out of Narbonne High School in California at the age of 16. Tarantino attended the James Best theater group for acting classes and wrote Captain Peachfuzz, his first screenplay, and the Anchovy Bandit at the age of 22.

In 1984, he started to work as a cashier in the video rental store "Video Archives" in Manhattan Beach, where he met Roger Avary with whom he would later collaborate. Continuing to study acting at Allen Garfield’s Actor’s Shelter in Beverly Hills, he started to focus on writing screenplays, rather than acting. The famous director managed to attract a great deal of attention with the movie "True Romance" released in 1993.

Meeting Tarantino at a Hollywood party, Lawrence Bender encouraged the famous director to write a screenplay, which resulted in "Reservoir Dogs," a heist film following the recent trends. This film played an important role in setting the tone for the later movies of the director. Reading the screenplay, Monte Hellman helped Tarantino in directing the film, as well as securing funding from Live Entertainment.

With the great success of Reservoir Dogs, Hollywood producers offered Tarantino numerous projects, including Speed Trap and Men in Black. Tarantino went to Amsterdam to work on his script for "Pulp Fiction", which brought him the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994. Pulp Fiction was also nominated for Academy Award for Best Picture, and brought Tarantino and Avary the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Tarantino directed Four Rooms, where he collaborated with Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell and Robert Rodriguez, and the fourth segment of "The Man from Hollywood". The next film of Tarantino is Jackie Brown (1997), an adaptation of the novel Rum Punch. Becoming interested in Broadway stages in 1998, he acted in Wait Until Dark. Then, Tarantino wrote and directed Kill Bill, which he released as two separate films, namely Kill Bill Vol.1 and Vol.2.

In 2004, Tarantino served as President of the Jury in Cannes Film Festival. In 2005, Tarantino directed the car sequence featuring Clive Owen and Benicio Del Toro in the film "Sin City". Therefore, he was credited as the "Special Guest Director". On February 24, 2005, he was announced to direct the season finale of the television series "CSI". Directing one episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Tarantino also acted in the television series "Alias".