Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s he was an independent filmmaker whose films used nonlinear storylines and aestheticization of violence. His films include My Best Friend's Birthday (1987), Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (Vol. 1, 2003; Vol. 2, 2004), Death Proof (2007) and Inglourious Basterds (2009). His films have earned him Academy, Golden Globe, BAFTA and Palme d'Or Awards and he has been nominated for Emmy and Grammy Awards. In 2007, Total Film named him the 12th greatest director of all-time.

Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of Connie McHugh Zastoupil, a health care executive and nurse, and Tony Tarantino, an actor and amateur musician born in Queens, New York. Tarantino's father is Italian American and his mother is of Irish and Cherokee Native American ancestry. He attended Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California for his freshman year before dropping out of school at age 15. He attended acting school at the James Best Theatre Company in Toluca Lake. At age 22, he held employment at the Video Archives, a now defunct video rental store in Manhattan Beach where he and fellow movie buffs like Roger Avary spent all day discussing and recommending films to customers.

After Tarantino met Lawrence Bender at a Hollywood party, Bender encouraged Tarantino to write a screenplay. He directed and co-wrote a movie called "My Best Friend's Birthday" in 1987. The final reel of the film was almost fully destroyed in a lab fire that broke out during editing but its screenplay would go on to be the basis for True Romance. In January 1992, Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs hit the Sundance Film festival. The film garnered critical acclaim. Reservoir Dogs was a dialogue-driven heist movie that set the tone for his later films. Tarantino wrote the script in three and a half weeks and Bender forwarded it to director Monte Hellman. Hellman helped Tarantino to secure funding from Richard Gladstein at Live Entertainment (which later became Artisan). Harvey Keitel read the script and also contributed to funding, took a co-producer role, and a part in the movie.