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Quentin Tarantino is mostly known for his film work behind the camera. But the filmmaker was also interested in a career in front of the camera as an actor. After doing Kill Bill, however, Tarantino decided to devote his focus solely on acting.
Quentin Tarantino originally wanted to be an actor
Tarantino has been fascinated with writing and directing films from a young age. But when he pictured himself having a professional career in the film industry, it was as an actor. The Pulp Fiction creator even attended an acting school to further follow his dream of performing in films. But ironically, going to acting school was what convinced Tarantino he might have actually belonged on the director’s chair.
“When it all changed for me was, I joined a really good acting school in Toluca Lake. I was involved in it for many years. By this time, I was a real cinephile, and actors weren’t my heroes. Directors were my heroes. So as an actor, I just wanted to work with this guy. I wanted to work with this guy, and I wanted to work with this guy. I knew a lot,” he said in a fairly recent interview with Deadline.
It was here that he discovered he was different from all the other students attending acting classes.
“I filled my brain with all this stuff, only to find out that the other kids in the acting class, who I liked, I thought they were good kids, but they didn’t know s***,” Tarantino added. “Not only did they not know s*** about movies, they cared less. They just cared about themselves. They just cared about being movie stars. That was all they cared about. Then at a certain point, I kind of realized that I cared too much about movies to simply appear in them. I wanted the movie to be mine.”
Quentin Tarantino lost the ‘acting bug’ after doing ‘Kill Bill’
Even after Tarantino succeeded in becoming a director, he still continued to build up his filmography as an actor. He did lengthy cameos in his own films like Pulp Fiction. Apart from that, he co-starred alongside George Clooney in the movie From Dusk Till Dawn. But after working on Kill Bill, Tarantino felt he wanted to put all of his focus behind directing projects.
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“I just lost the bug. Kill Bill was so hard to make, I just thought, if I’m going to get up early and be on set all day, it’s going to be my movie. I just don’t have the patience to be on somebody else’s dumb movie,” he once told The Guardian.
Why Quentin Tarantino once still wanted to act even after succeeding as a filmmaker
Before he lost the bug, Tarantino was still quite serious about making his mark as a performer in the film industry. Earlier in his career, he felt he had some ways to go in terms of acting. But he wanted to put in the work to continue developing his acting abilities.
“Look, I’m gonna keep doing it,” Tarantino once told Charlie Rose about acting. “And if the work is standing up, then people will not be able to help but see the work.”
Tarantino chose to continue pursuing acting because of all the investment he put into it.
“It’s what I started doing. It was my first entree into show-business, was acting. The only formal study I’ve ever had in my entire life has been acting. I quit school in the ninth grade. I didn’t go to high school, I didn’t go to college. I didn’t go to director’s school. I didn’t go to writing school, whatever that would be. I studied acting, and I studied boxing,” he explained.
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