Quentin Tarantino names “one of my favourite actors”
There may be no name in the history of filmmaking quite as beloved as the American director Quentin Tarantino. A passionate movie lover with a remarkable knowledge of the history of cinema, Tarantino pays tribute to some of his favourite stars and filmmakers throughout each of his 11 feature films, from Reservoir Dogs to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, tributing Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing in the former and the work of Bruce Lee in the latter.
Learning the filmmaking craft from the sheer makeup of cinema itself, it’s no wonder that Tarantino has so many favourites, with the auteur learning from the masters of the art form in his cinema education. A lover of such creatives as Martin Scorsese, Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone, to name just a few, the filmmaker became a student of cinema in every sense of the word.
It all goes back to his youth when he worked in a video store, where he developed a comprehensive knowledge of the silver screen. Speaking to The Talks about his ability to retain such knowledge, he comments: “[My] head is a sponge. I listen to what everyone says, I watch little idiosyncratic behaviour, people tell me a joke and I remember it. People tell me an interesting story in their life and I remember it”.
Whilst we know his favourite directors and recognise that he considered Robert De Niro to be the “best actor in the world”, who else was among Tarantino’s personal favourite performers?
This was revealed in a short interview with Variety in which Tarantino recalled his time writing the screenplay for the 1996 horror flick From Dusk Till Dawn, directed by Robert Rodriguez. Speaking about how he approached the script, the writer explained that a lot of the dialogue was written to be short and snappy, but Michael Parks’ Ranger character was the exception to this rule.
As Tarantino explains: “I wrote that Texas Ranger role just for Michael Parks, for his lazy Texas drawl. He’s always been one of my favorite actors in the world. On Then Came Bronson, Michael gave these Brando-like performances, the most naturalistic acting I’ve ever seen on a TV show”.
It’s not the only time that the director has confessed his love for Parks either, with fellow filmmaker Kevin Smith recalling Tarantino’s delight at seeing the actor in 2011s Red State.
Sitting down stoned to watch the film with Parks and Tarantino, Smith described the Pulp Fiction director’s joy, stating, “It was fantastic he was just so into that movie because when you watch it you could see his influence all over it, number one, and number two it’s a Michael Parks tour to force performance, and Quentin was a massive Michael Parks fan”.
Parks appeared in Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn with George Clooney, Salma Hayek, Danny Trejo, Harvey Keitel and Tom Savini. Check out the iconic trailer below.
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