Six actors Quentin Tarantino hates with a passion: “As annoying as usual”
It’s one thing for a director to criticise an actor they had a negative experience working with, but Quentin Tarantino hasn’t even crossed paths with most of the actors he’s voiced his disdain for over the years.
In fact, of the six he’s gone on record espousing his disdain for, only one of them has appeared in one of his movies. Most people in the industry would agree that it’s unprofessional for a filmmaker to shit all over someone they don’t know and haven’t collaborated with, but he clearly doesn’t care.
Tarantino has always been one of Hollywood’s most outspoken voices, but based on the reaction to his recent evisceration of a performer generally regarded as one of their generation’s most unsung talents, he’s finally crossed a line. Again, he won’t care because he’s Quentin Tarantino, but nobody should have been surprised when he issued a scathing assessment of a certain actor, since it wasn’t the first time.
There are no doubt even more thespians who’ve been belittled behind closed doors, but the following six stars all have one thing in common: the two-time Academy Award-winning auteur has made no bones about hating them with a passion.
Six actors Quentin Tarantino has always hatedd
Matthew Lillard
For absolutely no reason whatsoever, Quentin Tarantino decided to fire a shot at Matthew Lillard, and the actor was understandably upset that one of the industry’s most prominent directors said without provocation that he didn’t care for him in the slightest.
“It hurts your feelings,” he admitted, before being even more specific. “It fucking sucks.”
He hasn’t done anything to anyone, with Lillard quietly going about his business for the last 30 years, popping up in everything from Scream and Scooby-Doo to She’s All That and The Life of Chuck, which is apparently enough to gain him permanent entry to Tarantino’s shit list.
Lawrence Tierney
Not to defend Tarantino’s habit of lambasting actors, but he wasn’t the only member of the Reservoir Dogs cast and crew who hated Lawrence Tierney, who was the most unpopular person on the set of his debut feature by a considerable distance.
As well as calling him a “complete lunatic,” the first-time filmmaker even fired him from the production. Or, as he put it, he said that Tierney should “take your fat fucking ass off my fucking set.”
He’s still in the film, obviously, but the director wanted nothing to do with him ever again.
Owen Wilson
Like a more famous and successful version of Lillard, Owen Wilson has quietly gone about his business for decades without rubbing anyone the wrong way, apart from Tarantino, who seems offended by his mere existence.
Even though he ranked Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris as one of his favourite movies of the 21st century, it achieved such a high ranking in spite of its leading man: “I really can’t stand Owen Wilson,” he declared. “I mean, I can’t stand him.”
Again, it was a completely unnecessary dig, and not admitting he hated the actor wouldn’t have changed a thing about the point he was making.
Al Lettieri
A character actor best known for playing Virgil ‘The Turk’ Sollozzo in The Godfather, Al Lettieri’s subsequent forays into cinema didn’t sit too well with Tarantino, who said he found him repugnant.
In Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway, he was on villainous duties as Rudy Butler, leading the auteur to comment, “I’m not a fan.” If anything, he was underselling it: “I find his performance physically repellent,” he added. “Now, for a character like Rudy, that should be a good thing, no? No. It’s still a movie. I still should want to watch the movie and enjoy it.”
Miles Chapin
A retired actor who peaked in the 1980s wouldn’t be the first name to come to mind when trying to think of which names Tarantino would hate with an intense and burning passion, but the mere sight of Miles Chapin is enough to make his blood boil.
The filmmaker referred to him as “an actor I’ve always been allergic to,” and recalled that his performance in Tobe Hooper’s 1982 horror flick, The Funhouse, was “as annoying as usual.” He even committed the cardinal sin of wearing a jumper around his neck, which, for Tarantino, was enough “to make me hate him on sight.”
Paul Dano
There’s really no other candidate for the top spot other than Paul Dano, who may not even be aware that he’s been caught in the eye of a cultural storm, such is his aversion to any of the trappings that come with being a successful actor.
Even though he’s one of those actors who can always be relied on to never give a performance that’s anything less than eminently watchable, Tarantino is adamant that he’s the single “weakest” actor in the Screen Actors Guild. There’s definitely one current, or at least former, member of SAG who’s infinitely worse than Dano, though, and their name is Quentin Tarantino.
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