Five roles Quentin Tarantino almost ruined playing himself (2024)

When Quentin Tarantino changed the face of cinema in the ’90s, audiences couldn’t get enough of his ultra-cool, ultra-violent movies. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction put him on the map as a director, while True Romance and Natural Born Killers proved he was pretty damn good as a writer, too. Tarantino didn’t just see himself as a director and writer, though. Instead, he thought he was a triple threat, and acting would also be his domain.

The young filmmaker took small roles in his first two directorial efforts and soon began turning up in acting roles in movies like Sleep With Me, Four Rooms, Desperado, and Destiny Turns on the Radio. Most memorably, he played Richie Gecko in From Dusk Till Dawn, which is the role that makes the most sense. After all, he wrote the movie, and no other writer in their right mind would cast him as George Clooney’s brother.

The problem with Tarantino’s belief in himself as an actor is pretty fundamental, though. Try as he might, the man can’t act. As brilliant as he is at writing and directing, he’s equally atrocious in front of the camera. This is why we’re certain he would have ruined the other roles he either intended to play or was considered to play in his early career years.

Here are the five roles Tarantino almost ruined by playing them himself.

Five roles Quentin Tarantino almost ruined:

Drexl Spivey – True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993)

Gary Oldman‘s performance as dreadlocked pimp Drexl Spivey in Tony Scott’s True Romance is one of the most memorable of the veteran actor’s career. Some people love his wild, off-the-wall energy as a character who may be best described as “problematic” these days, whereas others think it’s cartoonish at best and offensive at worst. Either way, when you watch the film, you will remember Drexl – for better or worse. However, would that have been the case if Tarantino had played the character as originally intended?

In 2020, Tarantino told Empire magazine, “Well, I wrote Drexl for myself to play. Because I didn’t think it would get made as a Tony Scott movie — I thought it would be, like, an $800,000 movie.” The plucky young filmmaker had initially toyed with the idea of playing Clarence, the lead role which was eventually played by Christian Slater. He was savvy enough to realise that would be a no-go but thought Drexl, a side character who only appears in a few scenes, may have been more attainable. He shrugged, “So basically, it was just a role that I thought I would do a good job with.”

Ordell Robbie – Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997)

Tarantino has referred to himself as a “method writer” in the past, and it helps explain why he had ambitions of playing a few of his characters in his early days. You see, as he writes a script, Tarantino claims he becomes one or two of the characters, even living like them in real life. He told Playboy magazine in 2003 that he calls it “assimilating” the character. Interestingly, it often means he gets very attached to them. Maybe too attached.

While writing Jackie Brown, Tarantino assimilated Ordell Robbie, the small-time gun runner eventually played by Samuel L Jackson. Tarantino felt a very personal connection to Ordell because his characterisation was based so heavily on his life experience. In fact, he thought Ordell was who he could have been if he hadn’t had filmmaking ambitions. Tarantino’s heart wanted to play Ordell in the movie, but his head knew he had to cast an actual actor in the part. Still, he admitted, “I had to really work hard in letting go of Ordell, and letting Sam play him and not being a jerk about stuff.”

Mr Pink – Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)

In Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino plays the small role of Mr Brown, a crew member who is almost immediately killed near the beginning of the movie. It was a ballsy move by the first-time director to cast himself in the film at all, but he was almost even ballsier. You see, Tarantino imagined himself playing Mr Pink, the level-headed member of the group with an unusual distaste for the practice of tipping. The part would be played brilliantly by Steve Buscemi, but legend has it Tarantino gave him quite the motivation before his audition.

As the story goes, when Buscemi arrives to try out, Tarantino flat-out tells him that he wants to play Mr Pink in the film. Because of this, there was only one way Buscemi could convince him not to do it: he had to nail his audition so completely that Tarantino knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had to step aside. Naturally, Buscemi aced the audition, and Tarantino gracefully accepted his fate playing the man who utters the immortal line, “‘Mr Brown?’ That sounds too much like ‘Mr Shit.'”

The ‘D-Girl’ director – The Sopranos (Allen Coulter, 2000)

In the season two episode of The Sopranos entitled “D-Girl”, movie-loving mobster Christopher Moltisanti goes to Hollywood to try selling studio executives on his screenplay. He winds up on a movie set talking to a director played by Jon Favreau. However, writer Todd Kessler didn’t originally think of Favreau for the in-jokey role. Instead, he wanted Tarantino and did extensive research into the director’s unique personality to inform the character in his script.

Unfortunately, as Kessler told the Talking Sopranos podcast, “It turned out, either he wasn’t available or supposedly he didn’t get it.” Ultimately, Kessler may have dodged a bullet because Favreau was an actor long before he moved into directing. This meant he was adept at making fun of himself in the role in an entertaining way. In contrast, it’s easy to imagine Tarantino’s version of that very same character being pretty cringe-worthy.

Clarence Poole – My Best Friend’s Birthday (Quentin Tarantino, 1987)

Okay, this entry may be cheating slightly, but bear with me. In his no-budget film My Best Friend’s Birthday, which Tarantino made in the mid-’80s while he was still an employee at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, California, the nascent filmmaker plays the lead role. He is Clarence Poole, a radio DJ who decides to give his recently dumped best pal Mickey a birthday he’ll always remember. However, the film was never finished, and only 36 minutes of footage still exists.

While Tarantino dismissed My Best Friend’s Birthday as amateurish, he also admitted that trying to make a feature film with no money was his version of film school. He learned by doing, and he learned by making mistakes, and in the long run, this would prove invaluable. In the book My Best Friend’s Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film, he admitted, “I would raise up enough money until I had enough to shoot for a weekend. Then we wouldn’t do anything for, like, two months, and then I’d have more money, and we’d shoot for another weekend…None of us knew what we were doing.”

Related Topics