Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (/ˌtɛrənˈtiːnoʊ/; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, cinematographer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by non-linear storylines, satirical subject matter, and an aestheticization of violence, as well as features of neo-noir film and spaghetti Westerns. Tarantino grew up an obsessed film fan and worked at Video Archives, a video rental store while training to act. His career began in the late 1980s, when he wrote and directed My Best Friend's Birthday, the screenplay of which formed the basis for True Romance. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with the release of Reservoir Dogs in 1992; regarded as a classic and cult hit, it was called the "Greatest Independent Film of All Time" by Empire. Its popularity was boosted by the release in 1994 of his second film, Pulp Fiction, a neo-noir crime film that became a major critical and commercial success and judged the greatest film of the past 25 years (1983-2008) by Entertainment Weekly. Paying homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s, Tarantino released Jackie Brown in 1997, an adaptation of the novel Rum Punch. Kill Bill, a highly stylized "revenge flick" in the cinematic traditions of Japanese martial arts, spaghetti westerns and Italian horror, followed six years later, and was released as two films: Vol. 1 in 2003, and Vol. 2 in 2004. Tarantino directed Death Proof (2007) as part of a double feature with friend Robert Rodriguez, under the collective title Grindhouse. His long-postponed Inglourious Basterds, which tells the fictional alternate history story of two plots to assassinate Nazi Germany's political leadership, was released in 2009 to positive reviews. His most recent and highest-grossing work is 2012's critically acclaimed Django Unchained, a western film set in the antebellum era of the Deep South. It became the highest-grossing film of his career so far, making over $425 million at the box office. Tarantino's films have garnered both critical and commercial success. He has received many industry awards, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTA Awards and the Palme d'Or, and has been nominated for an Emmy and a Grammy. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time in 2005, and filmmaker and historian Peter Bogdanovich has called him "the single most influential director of his generation".