Pulp Résumé: How Tarantino Fooled Hollywood — Even His Name Came with a Twist
He faked roles, credits, and even his famous surname.
Before he was the sharp-tongued auteur behind Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino was just another struggling actor with no credits — and no patience for waiting. So he made them up. In the 1980s, Tarantino claimed to have appeared in Dawn of the Dead and even in a mythical Jean-Luc Godard version of King Lear.
"What happens when you start out acting, you gotta have a resume," he later admitted. "And if you ain’t done nothin’, you can’t write 'Nothing.' People aren’t gonna pay attention to that so you’ve gotta lie. Alright? I had better luck at it than most because I knew a lot about movies and stuff."
And indeed he did. A former video store clerk with encyclopedic knowledge of film, Tarantino knew exactly how to fake it believably. Not every aspiring actor would dare cite French New Wave cinema to bulk up their résumé — but then again, not every aspiring actor becomes Quentin Tarantino.
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Even his name had a backstory. Born Quentin Jerome Tarantino, he briefly took the surname of his stepfather, Zastoupil, before reclaiming his biological father’s — a name that now seems almost too perfect for a film director. Coincidence, or early branding? You decide.
Long before he made cult films, he built his own myth. Maybe that’s what great directors do — direct their own legend first.
