Michael Madsen’s brooding charisma needed Tarantino to unlock

 

Michael Madsen

Michael Madsen’s brooding charisma needed Tarantino to unlock it

The Reservoir Dogs and Donnie Brasco actor had a rare, sometimes scary power, as well as a winning self-awareness and levity

Peter Bradshaw

Thu 3 Jul 2025 22.43 

Until 1992, when people heard Stuck in the Middle With You by Stealers Wheel on the radio, they might smile and nod and sing along to its catchy soft-rock tune and goofy Dylan-esque lyrics. But after 1992, with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s sensationally tense and violent crime movie Reservoir Dogs, the feelgood mood around that song forever darkened. That was down to an unforgettably scary performance by Michael Madsen, who has died at the age of 67.

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in Joker: Folie à Deux.

 Joker: Folie à Deux

Quentin Tarantino praises flop Joker sequel: ‘I really, really liked it’

Writer-director shows support for critically maligned and commercially disastrous musical follow-up to 2019 hit

Benjamin Lee

Tuesday 29 October 2024

In Conversation: Quentin Tarantino

The director discusses the country’s legacy of white supremacy, Obama, and why he doesn’t worry about a Transformers future.

By Lane Brown
Photograph by Amanda Demme

August 24, 2015

We’re five months from the release of The Hateful Eight. How close to finishing are you?
We’ve got a little bit more than an hour finished right now. I just got back from seeing an hour of the movie cut together.

‘I recently wrote a fan letter to Thandiwe Newton’: Maya Hawke. Photograph: Dani Brubaker

Interview

Maya Hawke: ‘My parents didn’t want to have me do bit-parts in their movies’

The Stranger Things star on viral fame, the challenges of dyslexia, and convincing her actor parents she wanted to follow in their footsteps

Michael Hogan

Sunday 31 October 2021

N

ew York-born Maya Hawke, 23, began her career in modelling before making her screen debut as Jo March in the BBC’s 2017 adaptation of Little Women. She was Linda “Flowerchild” Kasabian in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and plays Robin in Netflix hit Stranger Things. Hawke now stars in Mainstream, directed and written by Gia Coppola. She lives in New York and is the daughter of actors Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke.

Quentin Tarantino Prepping New Movie Tackling Manson Murders

Quentin Tarantino Prepping New Movie Tackling Manson Murders (Exclusive)

JULY 11, 2017 4:01pm PT by Borys Kit

The director is already meeting with A-list talent for the project.

Quentin Tarantino is quietly starting to put together his latest project, and is talking to A-list actors for what is promising to be a unique take on the Manson Family murders.

The project, whose title is unknown, was written by Tarantino, who would also direct. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who have produced and executive produced Tarantino's previous films, are involved, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

WME is said to be in the early stages of shopping the project to studios to co-finance and co-distribute the venture, similar to the way Tarantino and the Weinsteins made the filmmaker's 2009 movie Inglourious Basterds, which had Universal Studios as a financial and distributing partner.

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Sources say that Tarantino is putting the finishing touches on the script and that Brad Pitt, who worked with the filmmaker on Basterds, and Jennifer Lawrence have been approached. Studios could receive the package after Labor Day, according to one source. The plan is to shoot in 2018, possibly in the summer.

Script details are scant but one of the stories centers on Sharon Tate, the actress and wife of director Roman Polanski who was murdered by Manson and his followers in 1969.

Manson had ordered a group of his followers to attack the inhabitants of a house in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles, believing it was owned by a record producer who earlier had rejected him.

Over the course of several hours on the night of Aug. 8, the four followers, using guns and knives, brutally killed Tate, who was eight months pregnant, and four other occupants.

In 1971, Manson and members of his crew were sentenced to life imprisonment for these and several other murders committed that summer.

If the Manson-Tate project does become Tarantino's next film, it will be his first movie based on true events. 

Any talks with actors are in the early stages, and one insider said that Lawrence is not considering the Tate role.

WME had no comment.

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Margaret Quealley

Margaret Qualley, Tarantino's New Manson Girl

Story by Katherine Gillespie

Photography by Jordan Walczak 

Styling by Mia Solkin

11 July, 2019

Margaret Qualley suggests we meet under the Washington Square Park arch, and I find her there five minutes early, crouching against the marble. She's busily writing in a notebook, wearing a long black dress with white Converse High Tops, low-key goth among summertime tourists. "This thing makes me seem so much more romantic, huh?" she asks. "But I'm just a poser."

Actually, the diary is more than a prop. "It's basically a means of keeping anxiety at bay. Whatever I'm feeling nervous or anxious about I just put it down on paper, so I can have it there, and hopefully get more quiet in my own mind." The 24-year-old actress is especially fond of the practice before bed, but mid-afternoon works, too. Also, she writes down cool things that happen to her so she can remember them later. She was thoughtful enough to re-read a bunch of entries before our interview, and I'm glad, because there's so much to talk about.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood review / Uneven ode to a lost era

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood review – uneven ode to a lost era

The director’s love letter to 1960s Hollywood, where all women are stereotypes and white men the real victims, disturbs and dazzles in equal measure

‘More than a buddy, less than a wife’: Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Photograph: Andrew Cooper/AP

I

t’s hardly surprising that this, perhaps the most “Tarantino-esque” of all Quentin Tarantino’s movies to date, is a love letter to Hollywood. Who has been more vocal about his passion for the movies, in all their glorious (and inglourious) variety, than Tarantino? And who has been more promiscuous with his affections, flirting with everything from grindhouse and exploitation flicks to martial arts, westerns and second world war adventures?

Margaret Quallery and Brad Pitt

But cinema is a notoriously fickle mistress. And Tarantino is a man who clearly relishes the concept of revenge. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a film that is as much about the movie industry as it is about the Manson family crimes that rocked it, is a work of infatuation, certainly. But if it’s a love letter, it’s the kind tinged with the grasping anguish and stab of bitterness that comes from knowing that the object of affection is almost certainly eyeing up a new favourite.Success in Hollywood comes with built-in obsolescence. It’s an industry with a vampiric appetite for fresh blood. Actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio, signposting the character’s vulnerability with a slight stutter) knows this, but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. Formerly the lead in a wild west vigilante TV series, by 1969 Rick has already started the slow slide into bad guy bit-parts and bourbon bloat. As a guest on new shows, he allows himself to be bested each episode by the actors who are positioned as his replacements. Wet-eyed with self-pity after a straight-talking producer lays out a road map for his irrelevance, Rick hides behind the sunglasses of his confidant and former stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Their friendship is a constant in an uncertain world. Their fates are linked: “More than a buddy, less than a wife,” is how the film’s narration puts it.

That fear of no longer being current, no longer getting the calls is something that infects everyone who works in the movie industry to some degree or another. And you suspect that Tarantino himself is not immune to it. A scene in which an awestruck child whispers to Rick: “That was the best acting I have ever seen” is milked for manly tears. Meanwhile, young people with a less reverent approach to their elders are dealt with swiftly and efficiently, with the kind of sound design that emphasises the crunch of righteous fist into puny, snickering hippy jaws.

‘Depth and subtlety’: Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Photograph: AP

This is a film set in a stunningly evoked Hollywood past. It can also be read as a commentary on Hollywood present. It’s a present that has skewed dramatically over the past couple of years, in which the balance of power has started to shift. And an industry that has started to hold itself to account. With that in mind, Tarantino’s decision to engineer audience support and sympathy for a character whose career has stalled because of allegations of violence against a woman feels like a deliberate provocation and a petulant dig at the #MeToo movement.

It doesn’t help that the female characters tend towards the schematic and stereotypical. Through sheer force of charm, Margot Robbie invests Sharon Tate, Rick Dalton’s Cielo Drive neighbour, with more depth and subtlety than the gilded, angelic ideal that is sketched on the page. With two notable exceptions – Margaret Qualley’s star-making skittish Manson girl and Julia Butters’s precocious child actor – the majority of the other female characters fall into the categories of either shrews or witches.

It’s this – the positioning of middle-aged white males as the real victims here, goddammit – that rankles. Together with a troubling ending that, at the director’s request, can’t be discussed, it makes the indulgences less easy to forgive. And there are many indulgences: the baggy first hour; the unwieldy two-tier flashback that sets up Cliff’s backstory; the jarring scene featuring Damian Lewis as a polyester version of Steve McQueen; the cheap shot at Bruce Lee.

But, equally, there is much here that represents a film-maker at the top of his game. The delight he takes in the details that anchor the story in time and place: who else but Tarantino would include entire montages dedicated to vintage fonts? The heart-tugging music choices; the limber camerawork and tawny nostalgic warmth of Robert Richardson’s cinematography; every last juicy frame set at the Manson family hideout at the Spahn Movie Ranch. It’s a film that could only have been made by one man. Tarantino’s fear of replacement, the subtext of some of the more uneven passages in the film, is, for the moment, unfounded.

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Watch a trailer for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

THE GUARDIAN

Margaret Qualley Explains How She Overcame Her Fear of Quentin Tarantino’s Foot Fetish

The rising star tells IndieWire how she went from a "no-go" audition and major nerves to stealing the show as a Charles Manson follower who charms Brad Pitt.

Kate Erbland

Jul 31, 2019 2:00 pm

Margaret Qualley arrives for the premiere of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”

Quentin Tarantino’s oeuvre is filled with fast-paced dialogue, profound movie references, and over-the-top violence, but there’s also a lot of feet. The filmmaker’s infamous foot fetish is well evidenced — Uma Thurman’s bare dancing feet in “Pulp Fiction,” Christoph Waltz giving Diane Kruger a pair of high heels in “Inglorious Basterds” — and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is no exception.

In one of the movie’s most memorable scenes, seductive Manson family member Pussycat (Margaret Qualley) props her dirty feet on a dashboard after stuntman Cliff (Brad Pitt) picks her up on the side of the road as the duo form an unlikely friendship.

Qualley wasn’t so sure about putting her toes in the spotlight. “I genuinely was like, ‘Quentin, this is a bad idea. I don’t have good feet,’” the scene-stealing actress said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “I was in pointe shoes for far too long to have toes that can be shown to the world.”

They talked it through. “We had a big debate about it, me, Quentin, and Brad, with them trying to be like, ‘You’re fine,’ and me being like, ‘No, guys, really, look, these are not good,'” Qualley recalled. “‘I know that I undermine myself pretty regularly, but I’m genuinely telling you these are not good feet, look at these. I know I’m self-deprecating, but I’m not being in this particular instance.'”

Eventually, Qualley caved and “did the foot thing,” she said, with no regrets. “I used to actually be pretty mortified with my feet,” she said. “Maybe I can finally just give up that now.”

When Qualley first auditioned for the part of the fictional Manson Family member, the casting director put her performance on tape for further consideration. But Qualley wasn’t jazzed about her work, and didn’t think the “Hollywood” team would be, either; she called her audition a “no-go.”

She was visiting her father in Panama when her agent called her about coming back to Los Angeles to read a scene with Brad Pitt. “I was like, holy freaking shit, this is insane,” she said. “Obviously, I was terrified.”

Tarantino calmed her nerves. “One of the coolest things about working with Quentin is that he’s so excited about what he’s doing,” the actress said. “He’s like a little kid on Christmas every time that he shows up to set. So when I get there, he’s so excited to show me the studio that they’re working on and show me all the various artifacts that they’ve made for the film, like the Apple cigarettes and the posters of Leo’s character and all that.”

Qualley, who is used to being the most excitable person on set, found a kindred spirit in Tarantino. “There’s nothing about him that’s cynical or jaded or trying to just play it cool. No one on the set is playing it cool,” Qualley said. “I could take out my nervous energy with enthusiasm because it was not frowned upon. It was like, ‘The cool kids are excited,’ which was really special to see.”

The filmmaker immediately set about getting her up to speed with key aspects of her fact-based role. While Qualley knew a bit about the Manson history, it was the kind of stuff gleaned from a podcast here and there. Tarantino loaded Qualley up with some rare Manson Family documentaries — “very strange ones that you can’t find yourself” — from his own DVD collection. (Qualley had to buy a DVD player just to watch them.)

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”

Sony Pictures

The research led her down some dark pathways. “There’s such a combination of youthful innocence with this overtone of menace and doom,” she said. I guess I was just kind of hugely surprised by the way in which these child-like, loving people were so corrupted and brainwashed.” Ultimately, Qualley found herself driving onto the Spahn Ranch set listening to Manson’s old songs — “which actually aren’t that bad!” — to get herself into the right headspace.

Qualley may be one of the film’s big breakouts, but she’s hardly a newcomer to the movie business. The daughter of actress Andie MacDowell and former model Paul Qualley, she abandoned her early career in ballet to explore modeling and acting at the age of 16. In recent years, her credits have ranged from HBO’s “The Leftovers” to “Native Son” earlier this year, both of which are a world apart from her role in Tarantino’s latest. A week before “Hollywood” premiered, she picked up her first Emmy nomination for “Fosse/Verdon,” in which she plays childhood idol Ann Reinking.

She also starred in Spike Jonze’s kinetic Kenzo short, with some of her own moves from her audition eventually making it into the final product (and now, given her self-admitted nerves, almost seems like a self-portrait). Six years into her acting career, she already seems to know what she wants when she takes a job.

“I realized that I have a lot more fun if I trust the director, because if you really trust the people that you’re working with, you don’t have to watch your own back as much,” she said. “You can kind of just feel free to do whatever if you feel like you are on the same page with the people that you’re working with. If you feel like you’re in good hands, then it doesn’t really matter. It makes your job so much easier.”

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is now in theaters.

INDIE WIRE

Margaret Quealley

Margaret Qualley knows Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was a 'once-in-a-lifetime experience'

By Derek Lawrence 

July 27, 2019

With her bare feet kicked up on the dash, Margaret Qualley may look like she’s as relaxed as can be in Once Upon a Time Hollywood. But with Quentin Tarantino behind the camera and Brad Pitt behind the wheel, she was secretly terrified. “I mean, how can you not be? I was just trying to soak up every minute, because I know this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” the 24-year-old actress tells EW.

And for Qualley — who stresses how “frickin’ nervous” she was to be involved in a project with such a pedigree, and how excited she was to be working with her favorite filmmaker — Once Upon a Time almost didn’t happen.

Auditioning for the film, she initially didn’t get the part. It was only after her father began trying to get her to visit him in Panama that fate stepped in. “He was like, ‘Book a ticket to Panama and you’ll get a Quentin Tarantino movie!’” she remembers him saying, which was funny because he had no idea about her audition, or even that such a movie existed. She did book that ticket, and it was on the beaches of Panama where, despite poor cellphone reception, a call managed to get through with a dream of a message: “You’ve got to fly home because you have a chemistry read with Brad Pitt.”She ultimately landed the part of Pussycat, a member of the Manson family who catches the attention of Pitt’s taciturn stuntman, Cliff Booth, in 1969 Los Angeles. Somewhat familiar with the Manson story that plays a role in Once Upon a Time, Qualley further studied up with DVDs given to her by Tarantino, and a surprising musical selection. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with Charles Manson’s album, but I always listened to that on my way into work,” she reveals. “To be honest, it’s not bad. [Laughs] So I’d listen to that the last, like, 10 minutes of driving to Spahn Ranch to kind of get me going; it became an OCD thing more anything.”

But not even that routine could fully prepare her for the Tarantino experience. Likening him to both a “talented jazz pianist” and a “fluid machine,” Qualley praises his generous direction and infectious excitement. “He shows up on set every day like a little kid on Christmas,” she says. On one particularly memorable day, Tarantino appeared with fresh dialogue he’d stayed up all night writing in longhand; in addition to the script pages (which she kept and intends to frame), Qualley got some advice that really resonated with her.

“I remember Quentin came up to me after a take and was like, ‘Did you mean to make a noise? Maybe I’m wrong, but I had this impulse that you wanted to do something but you didn’t quite do it,’” Qualley recalls. “And I did mean to, but I was kind of scared to take up space, because I felt so lucky to be there and I didn’t want to step on anybody’s toes. He was like, ‘Well, do it on the next take if you want. If you feel like doing something, I don’t know exactly what it is, but if you have the impulse to do something, then just listen to yourself.’ And I think that’s such great advice, because it was definitely nerve-racking to be there, but he encouraged me to trust myself, which was really nice and meant a lot.”

A lot more filmmakers will surely be trusting Qualley in the coming years, considering that the Leftovers alum is earning praise for her role in Once Upon a Time just a week after receiving an Emmy nomination for her performance in Fosse/Verdon. But those future projects will have a lot to live up to. “Quentin said, ‘This is going to be the most fun you’ve ever had making a movie,’” Qualley says. “And he was right.”

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is in theaters now.

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