Exploring Quentin Tarantino’s rules for his actors
There are very few directors who get to collaborate with the most prominent actors in the world, and Quentin Tarantino is undoubtedly one of them. Having worked with the likes of Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Margot Robbie, Robert De Niro, and Leonardo DiCaprio, Tarantino’s resumé is full of high-profile creative partnerships that have almost always paid off. Ever since Reservoir Dogs, the casting in his movies has rarely been off the mark.
Currently, the American auteur is preparing for his final cinematic project, after which he is reportedly going to retire from the film industry. Titled The Movie Critic, casting speculations about the upcoming project have already begun to spread. If you’re an actor who wants to audition for a role in what might be Tarantino’s last film, there are some essential rules you need to follow in order to work with the Pulp Fiction director.
For starters, cellphones are strictly prohibited on set. “Nobody can be anywhere around my camera with a cell phone,” Tarantino once told Jay Leno. “We actually have a Checkpoint Charlie (phone checkpoint)… I’ve done scenes in movies, and all of a sudden, somebody’s cell phone on the crew goes off and ruins the scene. That can’t happen”.
He added: “We’re here to do something; we’re really conjuring up something, and I can’t have my actors’ acting, or anything that we’re trying to do, be messed up by a cell phone. People can say, ‘Oh, well, I’ll remember to put it on silent.’ ‘I’m not here to test your memory. We’re here to do this. You will screw up everything we’re doing.'”
In addition, the director hates it when the cast and crew sleep on the set after a late-night shoot. He said: “It did always kind of bug me when you shoot at night and all of a sudden you see a crew member sleeping or an actor sleeping. That always kind of bugged me. So, I came up with something where it wouldn’t bug me.” That’s exactly why he keeps a sex toy around and photographs anyone who is guilty of breaking the rule with “Big Jerry”.
At this point, Tarantino’s foot fetish is infamous all over the world but it’s definitely something his colleagues have to keep in mind. In an interview with GQ, the filmmaker defended his artistic decision: “There’s a lot of feet in a lot of good directors’ movies. Like, before me, the person foot fetishism was defined by was Luis Buñuel, another film director. And Hitchcock was accused of it, and Sofia Coppola has been accused of it.”
Ranging from the willingness to do your own stunts as well as the desire to play unconventional characters, Tarantino’s strict guidelines are designed to eliminate actors who aren’t ready to give it their all. However, the most difficult of these might just be to star opposite one of Tarantino’s crazy cameos that are too unpredictable to figure out in advance.
While talking about why he gave up his dream of becoming an actor, Tarantino once said: “As the acting class is going on I just realised I just knew more about cinema than the other people in the class. I cared about cinema, and they cared about themselves… Actually, at a certain point, I just realised that I loved movies too much to simply appear in them. I wanted the movies to be my movies.”
Check out the full list below.
Quentin Tarantino’s rules for his actors:
- You can’t sleep on set
- Cell phones aren’t allowed on set
- You might have to do your own stunts
- Expect screenplays with foul language
- You have to be ready for shots of your feet
- Be prepared for Tarantino’s wild energy
- You have to be okay with killing on-screen
- Don’t expect to be typecast
- You might have to act alongside Tarantino
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