Quentin Tarantino

March 27, 1963.

Knoxville, Tennessee.

A pop star in his own right, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino changed the landscape of independent film. A video clerk in the California valley, he shot up from obscurity to become one of America's most celebrated filmmakers. His first film Reservoir Dogs was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival, gained critical acclaim and became an instant cult classic. The minimalist ensemble drama got the green light only after Harvey Keitel read the script and agreed to star. The cast also included Michael Madsen, Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, and Tarantino himself.

After the film's success, Tarantino became a media darling, in the limelight for his public life (dating actress Mira Sorvino) and a prize possession of Miramax. A break out hit, Pulp Fiction was the first independent film to ever break the $100,000 million dollar box office gross. A ultra hip, multi-layered, time-bending, crime fiction collage, the film restored the career of John Travolta, cemented the movie-star status of Samuel L. Jackson, and launched the career of a young Uma Thurman.

Three years later, Tarantino wrote and directed Jackie Brown. Pam Grier, Robert Forster, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert De Niro, Bridget Fonda and Michael Keaton led the all star-cast.

Tarantino has also steadily worked as an actor. He was the thief known only as Mr. Brown in Reservoir Dogs and the jittery Jimmie Dimmick in Pulp Fiction. In the Man From Hollywood section of Four Rooms he was a blow-hard movie director. He also starred in Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn and had a cameo appearance in Spike Lee's Girl 6. He also made a prominent guest-starring appearance on the spy series "Alias." In the new millennium, Tarantino reemerged to prominence with Kill Bill. Broken into two volumes, is a kinetic homage to revenge movies of the 1970s. Kill Bill features Tarantino's favorite actress Uma Thurman as a former assassin known as "The Bride." In 2007, Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez teamed to make Grindhouse, a double feature collaboration intended to bring the sleaze of seventies exploitation cinema back to the multiplex.