The 85 Best Quentin Tarantino Characters Ever, Ranked (2024)

We cut to two men wearing black-and-white suits. There’s Vincent Vega with an earring and shoulder-length hair riding shotgun. The car is driven by Jules Winnfield, who’s sporting a Kurtis Blow Jheri curl that looks like it’s still dripping. Context and appearances tell us they’re criminals, likely on their way to do criminal things. Except they’re talking about … cheeseburgers? The metric system? Foot massages? The details of their job trickle out—they’re on the way to an apartment, where there are as many as three or four guys waiting, and those guys are possibly armed—but the specifics seem incidental. The appeal is everything else: the mundane and philosophical musings, the moral and situational what-ifs, the casual conversation between two guys about to do serious things. When it’s time to actually go to work, Jules turns to his partner and says, fittingly, “Come on, let’s get into character.”

This happens in the first few minutes of Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino’s sophomore film and pantheon-level classic released in theaters 30 years ago this Monday. For many, it was an introduction to Tarantino’s cinematic world—and it was a fitting one. Because while Pulp Fiction is about many things—fate, coincidence, divine intervention, Marilyn Monroe impersonators—and while it’s most famous for its nonlinear story structure, the movie’s lasting legacy is its approach to characters. In his second time in the director’s chair, Tarantino took the talkiness and digressions from his diamond-heist-gone-wrong debut, Reservoir Dogs, and gave them an adrenaline shot right through the breastplate. Like the particulars of Jules and Vincent’s mission, the movie’s plot could seem incidental—we never did learn what was in that suitcase—but as long Tarantino and cowriter Roger Avary were feeding us dialogue like this, it hit like a Big Kahuna burger or maybe some uncut Choco.

It’s only appropriate, then, that on the anniversary of Tarantino’s big breakout, we celebrate the characters that have animated his oeuvre. Perhaps more so than any other director, he’s filled his universe with memorable characters both big and small. Sometimes it’s because of the strange, seemingly random details—why did Marsellus Wallace have a bandage on his neck?—but sometimes it’s because of the world-altering stuff. (Shosanna killed Hitler in Tarantino’s rewriting of history.) Sometimes they’re cold-blooded but undeniable villains like Hans Landa; other times they’re simply badass warriors with a high body count. (They’re probably still cleaning Crazy 88 blood off the walls of that restaurant.) But in making this list, we tried to capture the full breadth of his many creations: the main characters, the hired guns, the cameos, the people who also existed in real life, and, most importantly, the Gimp.

We also tried to capture the full scope of Quentin’s work, so films that he’s written are eligible. That means that in addition to the likes of Pulp Fiction and The Hateful Eight, you’ll find characters from True Romance, Natural Born Killers, and From Dusk Till Dawn. (Though, sadly, none from Four Rooms or, uh, It’s Pat.) It may not shock you which movie has the most entries on the list …

Ringer illustration

Like I said: pure, uncut Choco.

Finally, before we begin, a quick shout-out to some of characters who just missed the cut: Dick Ritchie, detective Nicky Dimes and his partner Cody Nicholson, the True Romance bodyguard who started firing on the cops, Robert Downey Jr.’s smarmy journalist in Natural Born Killers, the Reservoir Dogs cop who got his ear hacked off, Sex Machine, B.J. Novak’s Little Man, Steven Wright’s radio DJ, Samuel L. Jackson’s piano player in Kill Bill: Vol. 2, and probably a few dozen others. (Some others you won’t find: most of the characters Tarantino has played himself. We have a special ranking for those buried within the piece.)

All right, now it’s time for us to get into character. If you don’t like what you read here, give Vincent and Jules a call. Or better yet: Go get the Wolf. Maybe he can fix the situation for you. —Justin Sayles

85. Maynard and Zed, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Duane Whitaker (Maynard) and Peter Greene (Zed)

Maynard runs a pawnshop, and Zed is a security guard. At some point in their lives, they met a guy whom they now call the Gimp and whom they confine inside a room in the pawnshop. During “The Gold Watch,” Marsellus Wallace and Butch Coolidge’s fight makes its way into Maynard’s pawnshop, and Maynard decides to kidnap both of them, calling up Zed so that they can plan what to do with them. Butch is put into a room while Maynard and Zed assault Marsellus. Butch manages to escape, kill Maynard, and help Marsellus get free. We never see what happens to Zed on-screen, but if it’s anything close to what Marsellus said he was going to do, we know it wasn’t pretty. —khal

Best quote: “Nobody kills anybody in my place of business except me or Zed.”

84. Big Daddy Bennet, Django Unchained

Played by: Don Johnson

Card-carrying Regulator and Bennet Manor plantation owner Spencer Gordon Bennet, known to everyone as Big Daddy, is trouble. After Django Freeman and Dr. King Schultz eliminate the Brittle Brothers on his property, Big Daddy becomes enraged. He insists that Jenny complete her bag-making order for the night of their raid. However, things don’t go according to plan for the wealthy racist. Django takes him out after the other Regulators are either shot or blown up during the raid. Perhaps Big Daddy should have tested his bag before heading out to his demise. Guess all that wealth can’t buy you intelligence. —khal

Best quote: “Wait a minute! I didn’t say no bags.”

83. Fabienne, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Maria de Medeiros

I’ll never forgive Butch for making Fabienne cry.

Miramax

She made a mistake. She forgot to pack Butch’s watch. (Yes, the one that was in two different dudes’ asses over seven years. That one.) But that doesn’t give him the right to scream at her and throw TVs around a hotel room! That’s no way to treat his Sugar Pop, his Lemon Pie, his Jellybean, his Miss Beautiful Tulip. Fabienne is sweeter than sweet, pure candy in a rotten situation. I don’t care that she forgot the stupid watch or can’t tell the difference between a motorcycle and a chopper; I just want to make sure she gets her blueberry pancakes. —Austin Gayle

Best quote: “Butch, will you give me oral pleasure?”

Sony Pictures Releasing

82. Tex, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

Played by: Austin Butler

Almost three full years before moviegoers would see Austin Butler portray Elvis in theaters, he was playing someone way more infamous: Charles “Tex” Watson, a member of the Manson Family who was convicted of first-degree murder for his involvement in the Manson Family killings. Butler’s portrayal of Tex is truly remembered for two moments in the film: the first during Cliff Booth’s altercation with the Manson Family on a ranch, when Tex rode in on a horse to exchange words with him. Tex is likely more known for his appearance later in the film; on the night he and his associates are set to commit murder, Tex tries his best to sound tough while holding a gun on Cliff, before being mauled by his dog and having his head stomped in. He couldn’t even get his threats out with any menace or sense. His best quote will make me laugh every time I hear it, but I definitely don’t know what he meant. —khal

Best quote: “I’m as real as a donut, motherfucker.”

81. Broomhilda, Django Unchained

Played by: Kerry Washington

While rescuing Django Freeman’s wife, Broomhilda von Shaft, is the primary goal of Django and Schultz, it’s not like Broomhilda just sat around waiting for them. There’s a reason why she was locked in that hotbox; after Calvin Candie became her owner, she tried to escape Candyland. Her punishment was being locked in that box for 10 days; she was let out only because she spoke German. She doesn’t say much in the film, in German or English, but her resiliency speaks volumes. —khal

Best quote: “Hey, big troublemaker.”

Miramax

80. Esmarelda Villalobos, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Angela Jones

The dreamlike Pulp Fiction cab ride is the most disconnected moment in a movie filled with digressions. (Why is that the only black-and-white background in the film?) Do not, however, believe anyone who tells you it’s pointless. It’s all scene setting and character building—compare the cool way Butch reacts to learning he killed his opponent in the ring to how he explodes when he learns Fabienne forgot his dad’s watch. But mostly, it’s unforgettable, and that’s all thanks to the brief appearance of Esmarelda, who seems as though she’s been beamed in from a French New Wave film. She’s perhaps the only character in Pulp Fiction not comfortable with small talk—she’d rather know what it feels like to kill another person. (Short answer, in Butch’s telling: mostly nothing.) In a movie that can sometimes be fixated on the small things, it’s important to have someone asking the big questions. —Sayles

Best quote: “What does it feel like … killing a man? Beating another man to death with your bare hands? It is a subject I have much interest in.”

79. Bag Head #2, Django Unchained

Played by: Jonah Hill

Look, no one’s out here saying that Bag Head #2 was a good guy. In the grand scheme of Django Unchained, no one is calling him a hero. But I think you can appreciate how he brings a sort of pragmatic vibe to the lynch mob that Big Daddy doesn’t like. He was just asking whether any of the other Bag Heads brought any extra bags because he made the eyeholes in his too big. It’s a valid question. To be clear, I’m glad he died. —Andrew Gruttadaro

Best quote: “OK, I’m confused. Are the bags on or off?”

78. Jody, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Rosanna Arquette

Oh, Jody. Jody the Unflappable. The Queen of the Sanctity of Needlework. The One With All the Shit in Her Face. As men quiver in the face of their greatest challenges (and by “challenges,” I mean, “needing to inject the wife of a crime boss with a life-saving dose of adrenaline”), she looks on in wide-eyed, fearless fascination. And after the job is done, she—or, well, Rosanna Arquette, really; tremendously efficient work by her—is the one to deliver one of Pulp Fiction’s most iconic lines with a laugh: “That was fucking trippy.” It really was, Jody. You nailed it. —Gruttadaro

Best quote: “That was fucking trippy.”

77. Wayne Maunder, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

Played by: Luke Perry

The lightly fictionalized depictions of certain real-life people in Once Upon a Time have long driven the conversation around the movie: There’s Sharon Tate, a victim of the most famous killing in Hollywood history, whose story is rewritten thanks to Cliff Booth and a pit bull. There’s Roman Polanski, Tate’s husband and the disgraced director who fled the U.S. in the late ’70s to avoid prison time. And, of course, there’s Bruce Lee, portrayed uncomfortably in OUATIH as a blustery loudmouth who can’t even beat a stuntman in a fight. (At least in the stuntman’s recollection.)

But in Quentin’s love letter to Old Hollywood, there’s one lightly fictionalized character that often goes overlooked: Wayne Maunder, one of the stars of Lancer, played here by Luke Perry in his final film role. Decades removed from his turn as the bad boy heartthrob Dylan on Beverly Hills, 90210, Perry shows up during the Lancer pilot-filming sequence for a quiet, dignified cameo set against Leonardo DiCaprio–as–Rick Dalton’s fire and brimstone.

Tarantino’s gift in crafting homages partly lies in his ability to make the small feel big—this movie seems more interested in a down-marquee star like Maunder than in the characters based on veritable A-listers—and it’s no different with Perry. His post-90210 career never took off like one may have expected; he feels more like a relic of the ’90s than someone who defined it. But in Once Upon a Time, he feels as big as Steve McQueen or anyone else the film immortalizes. Perry’s an avatar for the new Old Hollywood, and I can’t wait to see who plays him in the fictionalized version. —Sayles

Best quote: “You do know kidnapping is a hanging crime?”

Dimension Films

76. Abernathy, Death Proof

Played by: Rosario Dawson

Abernathy pisses me off early in her precious screen time when she, lying in the back seat of the car with an eye mask on and her feet dangling out the window, says: “I’m not awake. I’m asleep.” Rude! And she still has the audacity to ask her friends for vodka, sugar-free Red Bull, and some Red Apple tans?! Abernathy is prissy and high maintenance. It’s exhausting. I can’t say I’m shocked that her crush on director Cecil Evans isn’t panning out. She also willfully throws her sleeping friend Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to the menacing dog of a man who lets the women take the car for a test drive, and that’s after she has to beg Zoë (Zoë Bell) and Kim (Tracie Thoms) to let her come along for the joyride at all. She’s a bad hang with cool friends. I’m happy she gets some licks in when they’re all punching Stuntman Mike in a circle, but other than that, Abernathy is prime hate-watch material. —Gayle

Best quote: “Fuck that shit! Let’s kill this bastard.”

75. The Gimp, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Stephen Hibbert

A strange glitch in the ’90s film continuum links Pulp Fiction, one of the consensus best films ever made, and It’s Pat: The Movie, one of the consensus worst films ever made. By hanging around during Harvey Keitel’s 1993 Saturday Night Live appearance, Tarantino became friends with then–cast member Julia Sweeney and her then-husband, Stephen Hibbert—who would soon cowrite the It’s Pat movie. Tarantino was in a brief script doctor phase of his career and subsequently helped with a rewrite of the movie … in ways that are unclear, given the end results. (Tarantino, for the record, told Playboy in 1994 that he wanted Pat to be a girl. Just so you know.) Beyond an essential scene with Ween, the Pat movie has little to offer history, but it did lead to Sweeney being cast in Pulp Fiction in the small part of Raquel, the heiress to Monster Joe’s Truck and Tow, and Hibbert being cast as the Gimp.

The unsettling vagueness of the Gimp—why is he just ready to go in that box on a Thursday afternoon, and why the hell is he going along with this?—is one of Tarantino’s more subtly clever character decisions. It implies a story that would take its own movie to tell—or at the very least a Dateline episode. But while it’s left unsaid in the movie, Tarantino had more in his head for what was going on in that pawnshop. Zed and Maynard—the two perverts who seemingly have a whole routine in place for when two men roll into the store fighting—were brothers, according to the script, and the Gimp was a hitchhiker they’d kidnapped years before, Tarantino explained recently. This poor soul had been Gimped up so long that he’d lost touch with his identity, which is why he isn’t trying to escape with Butch. But you don’t really need to know all that. Like Pat’s gender, the point is that you don’t know. —Nate Rogers

Best quote: [Muffled screaming.]

Ringer illustration

74. Brett, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Frank Whaley

Something you have to wonder about Brett: Was he simply playing coy at first? It’s easy to write off Marvin, Flock of Seagulls, and their breakfast-burger-chomping leader, Brett, as a hapless group of would-be criminals caught flat-footed in their apartment, after Jules and Vincent come knocking bright and early, looking to reclaim the glowing contents of the briefcase. But how did Brett—played perfectly by a stumbling, bumbling Frank Whaley—get involved with such a valuable briefcase in the first place? How did he at one point come to be deemed viable by a man as serious as Marsellus Wallace?

We know that Brett has big brains; he knocked that Royale With Cheese metric system trivia out of the park, OK? And we also eventually learn that he wasn’t as flat-footed as we initially thought. The fourth member of their crew was hiding with the “hand cannon” and could have jumped out at any point. Maybe Brett was getting increasingly frantic not just about the fact that Flock of Seagulls was shot in front of him, but also because his ace in the hole was staying in the hole, unable to gather the courage to save his friends. Underestimate people like Brett at your own peril. There’s a version of this story where Jules and Vincent are both shredded up in a scheme of Brett’s design. —Rogers

Best quote: “What?”

73. General Ed Fenech, Inglourious Basterds

Played by: Mike Myers

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Mike Myers over the past 35 years, it’s that he’s good at doing comedic British accents. His part in Inglourious Basterds is actually pretty serious—he’s the English general who recruits Michael Fassbender’s character, Archie Hicox, to join the Basterds’ “little escapade”—and Myers plays it with gravitas. But it’s hard not to laugh a little bit when he shows up for five minutes. I swear that’s not an insult. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how funny it would be if Austin Powers made a cameo in a bloody, revisionist World War II epic. Yeah, baby. —Alan Siegel

Best quote: “We have all our rotten eggs in one basket. The objective of Operation Kino: Blow up the basket.”

72. Susan “Sadie” Atkins, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

Played by: Mikey Madison

Tarantino’s rise coincided with moral panic in America over violence in media, and while he occasionally found himself the subject of that grandstanding, his movies have never tried to present gore in a particularly convincing way. The infamous ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs is actually more tasteful and tongue-in-cheek than its early reputation would suggest, and as his visual style evolved in the 2000s and 2010s, the violence rendered on-screen took on a cartoonish quality that distanced it from anything too visceral. What exists in its place is a different kind of provocation: the historical revisionism of Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, films that reimagine tragedies structural and acute with righteous indignance. In Once Upon a Time, “Sadie” Atkins, the real-life Manson Family member portrayed by Mikey Madison—now poised for her own televisual fame after starring in this year’s Anora—casts the family’s culture-shifting murder spree as a direct consequence of on-screen violence. Minutes later, of course, she and her cohort are killed in some of the most madcap homicides ever committed to film. —Paul Thompson

Best quote: “If you grew up watching TV, that means you were watching murder. Every show on TV that wasn’t I Love Lucy was about murder. So my idea is: We kill the people who taught us to kill. I mean, where the fuck are we, man? We are in fucking Hollywood, man! The people who an entire generation grew up watching kill people live here, and they live in pig-shit fucking luxury. I say fuck ’em! I say we cut their cocks off and make ’em eat it!”

Miramax

71. Beaumont Livingston, Jackie Brown

Played by: Chris Tucker

Ordell didn’t realize the trouble he stirred up when he killed Beaumont. Portrayed by Chris Tucker, Beaumont was a liability for Ordell in his (illegal) line of business. Someone like Beaumont, who admitted to being scared about getting time over “some machine gun shit,” could potentially start talking to a detective, putting Ordell in a bad situation. So what does Ordell do? He puts Beaumont in a bad position, creating a tale to convince Beaumont to get into the trunk of a car. As reluctant as he may be to climb into the trunk, Beaumont can’t afford to cross Ordell, the man who had Max Cherry bail him out. In a cunning act of deception, instead of sticking to his story and driving to a meetup before giving him the signal to pop out of the trunk with a shotgun, Ordell drives into a lot around the corner with “Strawberry Letter 23” blaring, then gets out and shoots Beaumont dead himself. A temporary fix for Ordell, who was right: Beaumont was an informant, which means that the ATF and the LAPD will be on him soon. —khal

Best quote: “I ain’t ridin’ in no trunk for no minute, man.”

70. Marvin, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Phil LaMarr

Marvin’s role in the grand scheme of things may have been small, but he was the catalyst for two significant moments in the story. First, he was the one who informed Jules and Vincent about the briefcase’s location, surviving the bullet-ridden ordeal in the apartment. He did not survive the car ride immediately following that ordeal, but cleaning his brain matter from the back seat of the car created an entire story for this film. In death, Marvin provided viewers with a scenario that required the Wolf’s skills, so shout-out to Marvin! —khal

Best quote: “Oh, fuck! I’m fucked. Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck!”

69. Elliot Blitzer, True Romance

Played by: Bronson Pinchot

Bronson Pinchot, best known as Balki Bartokomous from the hit ABC sitcom Perfect Strangers, took on a completely different role in True Romance. In the film, he portrays Elliot Blitzer, an actor and production assistant who always seems to mess things up. Clarence’s friend Dick Ritchie calls on Elliot to help broker a deal to sell the cocaine Clarence and Alabama, um, inherited from Drexl. Elliot arranges a meeting with movie producer Lee Donowitz but ends up with a faceful of coke during a traffic stop after disrespecting the woman in his car. He ends up becoming an informant about the coke deal he brokered and has the audacity to ask the detective, by name, whether he can leave the drug deal. A class act to the end. —khal

Best quote: “Elliot, your motivation is to stay out of jail.”

Universal

68. Hugo Stiglitz, Inglourious Basterds

Played by: Til Schweiger

The subject of one of the most thrilling introduction sequences in a Tarantino film—it’s amazing how much of his arm he can fit down a Gestapo officer’s throat—Stiglitz is the flat-out coolest of all the Basterds. (For evidence: Watch how Hugo barely reacts when they break him out of his holding cell, choosing to focus on his cigarette instead.) One of the only real crimes of Inglourious Basterds is that we don’t get more of him, because we too are big fans of his work when it comes to killing Nazis. —Sayles

Best quote: “Say ‘auf wiedersehen’ to your Nazi balls.”

67. Joe Cabot, Reservoir Dogs

Played by: Lawrence Tierney

He looks like the Thing but acts even tougher, he’s got a rigid set of personal rules, and he’s got a gut feeling he really oughta listen to. Joe Cabot isn’t as menacing or memorable as, say, Marsellus Wallace, but in the interconnected L.A. crime universe of Tarantino’s early movies, Joe cuts a dignified figure. A large part of that is thanks to Lawrence Tierney’s gravelly voice and stoic demeanor. (Fun fact: His “dead as Dillinger” comment is likely a callback to the fact he actually played John Dillinger decades earlier.) Don’t piss him off, don’t try to trade names, and especially do not forget to tip. —Sayles

Best quote: “You get four guys all fighting over who’s gonna be Mr. Black, but they don’t know each other, so nobody wants to back down. No way. I pick. You’re Mr. Pink. Be thankful you’re not Mr. Yellow.”

66. Fredrick Zoller, Inglourious Basterds

Played by: Daniel Brühl

When we first meet Fredrick Zoller, he’s no villain. He’s like you, actually: a film buff. In that moviegoer vacuum, it’s difficult to blame Fredrick for being pulled in by the sight of Shosanna Dreyfus, changing the marquee lettering of her very own movie theater, as he strolls the streets of Paris. Shosanna is a Jew living in hiding under the alias Emmanuelle Mimieux, but Zoller knows nothing of that. At the moment he simply wants to talk film with a beautiful woman. Obnoxious in his timing? Sure. Oblivious about her disinterest? Absolutely. Willfully ignorant of the fact that he’s wearing the uniform of an army that is occupying this woman’s country while attempting an extermination of millions of people across the continent? Bien sûr.

But for just a moment—before we learn about the exploits of the famous Fredrick Zoller, who became the Nazis’ most adored soldier after single-handedly killing 250 enemies from a bell tower over three days—he’s given the benefit of being seen as his own person. This moment of grace from Tarantino, however, goes out the window quickly, as we learn the true extent of his monstrosity. Zoller deserves little, if no, sympathy, but it feels notable that he was based in part on Audie Murphy, an American soldier with a staggering kill count who came home as his country’s most decorated soldier of World War II. Murphy became a celebrity, too, and turned to acting and songwriting. He was a pretty damn good songwriter, as it turns out, having a few of his songs performed by none other than Harry Nilsson. Murphy was a real artist, but he never shook off the terrors of war, suffering from PTSD—and will always be known for the people he killed. At a certain point, Zoller chose his murderous path. But as with Murphy, part of the tragedy is just imagining what kind of life was lost when a person like him was handed a gun. —Rogers

Best quote: [In French] “Most German soldiers are somebody’s son.”

Miramax

65. The Crazy 88, Kill Bill

Played by: Various actors (including Tarantino)

After her intense fight with Gogo, the Bride has one thing on her mind: taking out O-Ren Ishii. However, one grueling fight isn’t the only obstacle on her way to O-Ren: The Bride also has to contend with the Crazy 88, a group of yakuza assassins who do O-Ren’s bidding. The visual of the 88 40-plus mask-wearing, weapon-carrying people around the Bride is pretty awesome, especially when you know that you’ll soon see some of the most artful ways to be hacked and slashed by the Bride. Now, either their look was better than their fighting skills, or the Bride is just that good and that determined to battle O-Ren—but not even Crazy 88 leader Johnny Mo stands a chance against her. Hopefully, that one young Crazy 88 member heeds the Bride’s words and goes back home to his mother. Most of the Crazy 88 end up with severed limbs to reattach. —khal

Best quote: “Charlie Brown!”

Warner Bros.

64. Virgil, True Romance

Played by: James Gandolfini

It’s sometimes hard to remember that the most famous TV mob boss was at one point best known as a that guy who played hired goons. He’d eventually subvert the trope with his roles in Get Shorty and The Mexican—those characters showed there was a heart underneath the muscle—but in True Romance, the only thing he’s trying to subvert is Alabama’s face. The Virgil-Alabama fight scene remains one of the most grisly moments in the greater Tarantino universe—a diminutive Southern belle in a no-holds-barred fight against an attack dog with a thick accent and big shotgun. He loses because he has to, but in the process, he flashes the otherworldly charisma that made him the king of North Jersey. He was never destined to stay an underling. —Sayles

Best quote: “Shit, now I do it just to watch their fuckin’ expression change.”

63. Santanico Pandemonium, From Dusk Till Dawn

Played by: Salma Hayek

“The mistress of the macabre, the epitome of evil,” is how Razor Charlie describes her before beckoning the crowd to “kneel and worship” at Santanico Pandemonium’s feet. This scene takes place at a strip club in the middle of the desert called the Titty Twister, so the crowd was not surprised when a woman with a snake wrapped around her began to dance. What should be a tantalizing experience quickly turns into a guns-drawn bar fight that escalates when Santanico transforms into a vampire. As it turns out, this strip club was built on top of an Aztec temple, and it’s full of vampires! Santanico meets a chandelier-assisted death soon after all hell breaks loose, and for all of the monsters—both vampire and human—that are in that film, we know which one stood out the most. —khal

Best quote: “I’m not gonna drain you completely. You’ll be my slave … because I don’t think you’re worthy of human blood. You’ll feed on the blood of stray dogs.”

62. Marvin Schwarz, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

Played by: Al Pacino

Until I watched the scene in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood where Marvin Schwarz (a dapper, infectiously affable Al Pacino) delivers a sobering reality check to Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton—effectively confirming the actor’s worst fears by encouraging him to accept his fading Hollywood status, move to Italy, and become a facsimile of a star—I didn’t pay much attention to the careful consideration every working actor must have about the parts they inhabit.

Acting is not real. But the audience’s reaction to it, once their imagination gets hooked like a fish, can be powerful enough to override the fictional qualities that make what we’re watching so engaging in the first place. The quality of the performance is then rendered secondary. Lines are blurred. Actor and character become one.

In their meeting at Musso & Frank, Schwarz enlightens Dalton, along with everyone watching Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. The underlying purpose of this encounter is expository, but Schwarz—an oracle crossed with a salesman who can smell insecurity from a mile away—accomplishes something more. His monologue catalyzes the entire film. It’s indelible and self-referential and tells us everything worth knowing about Dalton. Meanwhile, a small slice of our brain can’t help but analyze DiCaprio (and, crucially, Brad Pitt). —Michael Pina

Best quote: “So, Rick, who’s gonna kick the shit out of you next week? … Down goes you. Down goes your career as a leading man.”

Warner Bros.

61. Clifford Worley, True Romance

Played by: Dennis Hopper

True Romance doesn’t spend much time with Hopper’s Clifford Worley, Clarence’s father. We are introduced to him when Clarence and Alabama are on the run after killing Alabama’s former pimp, Drexl. They ask Clifford, a former cop, to inquire with some of his ex-colleagues about the Drexl murder and possible suspects. Initially, Clifford learns that the police are focusing on an associate of Drexl’s, but the Mafia finds out that Clarence’s ID was on Drexl’s body. This leads Vincenzo Coccotti to kidnap Clifford in an attempt to locate Clarence and Alabama. Even though he wasn’t always there for Clarence like he should have been, Clifford refuses to give up any information. Before Coccotti kills Clifford, Clifford shares a memorable story about Coccotti’s Sicilian heritage that I won’t repeat here. This enrages Coccotti, who pulls out a gun and ends Clifford’s life on the spot. —khal

Best quote: “Son of a bitch was right. She tastes like a peach.”

60. Hattori Hanzo, Kill Bill

Played by: Sonny Chiba

A retired master swordsmith (and present-day terrible sushi chef), the man from Okinawa had given up his trade for more than a quarter century before Beatrix Kiddo showed up on his barstool. And we immediately understand why, as the spiritual toll of having made so many instruments of death flashes across Hanzo’s face as the yellow-haired warrior evokes his past. But all it takes is the mention of one wayward former student to pull him back. A month later, he warily presents Beatrix with his finest work—a blade strong enough to wipe out the biggest rats and maybe even God himself.

Hattori Hanzo represents something larger than just sword-making within the Tarantino universe, though. He’s named after a 16th-century samurai general, but more importantly, he’s played by Sonny Chiba, the legendary martial artist and actor. Chiba has been referenced several times throughout Tarantino’s work. He’s the star of the triple feature Clarence Worley watches at the Vista Theater in True Romance—a theater Quentin now owns—while the opening scroll of Chiba’s film Karate Kiba is the inspiration for Jules Winnfield’s famous Ezekiel 25:17 speech. Tarantino’s work often straddles the line between pastiche and homage, but when he’s able to bring it all together, as he does with Hattori Hanzo, it transcends reverence and film history and becomes an entirely different, vital thing. It’s like watching a master swordsmith perfect his craft. —Sayles

Best quote: “If on your journey, you should encounter God, God will be cut.”

59. Dieter Hellstrom, Inglourious Basterds

Played by: August Diehl

Because Inglourious Basterds was written by Quentin Tarantino, one of the British commandos is a former film critic whose erudition leads him and his friends to be murdered in a basement. When Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) speaks to his compatriots during a secret rendezvous in Vichy France, his odd German accent catches the ear of Dieter Hellstrom (August Diehl), the type of German officer—sneering, professorial—one imagines would be downright pathetic in any time but war, clinging to status and relishing every indignity he can visit on his subordinates. When Hicox flashes the wrong hand sign while asking for three glasses, Hellstrom, now confident in his belief these are Allies posing as fellow Nazis, turns gleeful as he triggers a standoff that he knows will likely leave him dead. The evil of banality. —Thompson

Best quote: “You’ve just given yourself away, captain. You’re no more German than that scotch.”

58. John “The Hangman” Ruth, The Hateful Eight

Played by: Kurt Russell

Kurt Russell in a movie scored by Ennio Morricone and set in a desolate, frozen world, with his character just trying to figure out who’s really who? Stop me if you’ve seen this one before.

But while R.J. MacReady was the swaggering hero of The Thing, the Hangman is simply the least terrible main player in The Hateful Eight. (And truly only by default: Sure, Daisy Domergue deserves her own rung in hell, but at a certain point, you wonder whether Ruth is keeping her chained to him simply so he can use her as a punching bag.) Even if you take exception to his approach, you have to appreciate that Ruth’s one of the few people at Minnie’s not lying about his identity, history, or intentions. Unfortunately, that naivety ultimately does him in several times over: first when he learns the truth about Major Warren’s Lincoln letter and again—and finally—when he drinks the poisoned coffee. The Hangman wasn’t long for the haberdashery, but neither was anyone in The Hateful Eight. Because just like in John Carpenter’s classic, there’s an evil here that’s uncontrollable, even in the face of someone like Russell. —Sayles

Best quote: “You really only need to hang mean bastards, but mean bastards, you need to hang!”

57. Vincenzo Coccotti, True Romance

Played by: Christopher Walken

Organized crime is a regular bedfellow of Tarantino characters, but Italian mobsters—the Big Kahuna of organized crime, if you will—show up only in True Romance. Unfortunately for Clarence Worley (Christian Slater), the suitcase of dope he ripped off was ultimately the property of Blue Lou Boyle, a Detroit boss menacing enough that we don’t need to see him on-screen to know how dangerous he is. That information is instead communicated by the menace of Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken), Blue Lou’s consigliere, who arrives at the trailer of Clarence’s father, Clifford (Dennis Hopper), and introduces himself as “the Antichrist.” Shit, man. Good luck, Cliff.

Mention Walken and Tarantino, and the obvious thought is Captain Koons and the gold watch in Pulp Fiction. Don’t sleep on the other Walken-Tarantino stand-alone scene. Walken vs. Hopper is a heavyweight brawl for the ages—a scene to cherish for the way director Tony Scott allows it to breathe, the tension brewing as both men slowly read each other, until it’s clear that there’s only one violent way this is going to end. My favorite moment of Walken’s performance is his response to Hopper’s question of “You’re Sicilian, huh?” Walken replies with a soft, almost whispered “Yeah, Sicilian.” He smiles as he says it, with pride. I’ve seen the movie many times, and I still don’t really know why he smiles there. Pride of being a Sicilian? Maybe. But that seems too simple. More likely, it’s a smile of pride for Hopper—a smile in advance recognition of a father deciding in that exact moment to enjoy his last cigarette and tell a Sicilian mobster, the Antichrist at his door, to go to hell. —Rogers

Best quote: “You got me in a vendetta kind of mood.”

56. Ray Nicolette, Jackie Brown

Played by: Michael Keaton

Jackie Brown is full of twists, but none is greater than the fact that Michael Keaton—and all his live-wire energy—somehow slotted perfectly into a Tarantino ensemble. If anything, his version of Nicolette works precisely because it shouldn’t. Ray very much wants to be cool, which means he doesn’t have the effortless appeal of some of QT’s other staples. He can’t keep his mouth shut for long enough to actually be mysterious, but he also doesn’t get the kind of big, overarticulated monologue that puts other Tarantino characters in the pantheon. Ray is just sort of anxiously fluttering in and out of the story … and it’s electric. Nicolette chews up everything in sight: gum, coffee stirrers, the riffy dialogue, all the half-truths that Jackie feeds him, and every freaking scene possible. You can never quite tell how much Ray knows that he’s being played, but you can feel the wheels turning and grinding and winding up a cop who’s very much in his own head. —Rob Mahoney

Best quote: “I sure hope you didn’t do anything stupid, Jackie.”

Ringer illustration

55. Seth and Richie Gecko, From Dusk Till Dawn

Played by: George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino

These guys are foul. Seth—imbued by George Clooney with a mezcal-soaked grubbiness—would like you to believe he’s more refined than his sexually predatory, murdering, mentally/emotionally/spiritually disturbed little brother, Richie, played by Tarantino himself. But if Dusk Till Dawn makes anything clear (other than how much Quentin would like to wine and dine each of Salma Hayek’s toes), it’s that the line between stickup Romulus and barbarous Remus is only so fine.

Richie’s a rabid dog. Parsing through the makings of a figure like that is like psychoanalyzing a swarm of Africanized honey bees. Seth for the first half of the movie is something worse—something hacking, shooting, staking, and sunburning a coven of vamps might not even erase: complicit. At some point, even with siblings, you’re kinda the company you keep. In the words of a certain former man of faith, both these fellas are major “fucking losers,” even if only one gets what’s coming to them. —Lex Pryor

Best quote (Richie): “It hurts like a fucking son of a bitch. Thanks for asking, Seth.”

54. Chris Mannix, The Hateful Eight

Played by: Walton Goggins

Well, I’ll be double-dog damned! It was only a matter of time before Tarantino the casting impresario and Walton Goggins the peerless character actor joined forces. (“Watching him for six years do faux-Quentin dialogue [in The Shield] let me know that he’s got the right kind of tongue,” Tarantino quipped in 2015.) And once they did—resulting in Billy Crash’s comeuppance in Django Unchained—it was only a matter of when, not if, a collab would happen again.

Which brings us to Chris Mannix, the self-proclaimed sheriff of Red Rock played by Goggins in The Hateful Eight. “The way Quentin builds his stories, everybody is three-dimensional,” Goggins said. “Even the guy who just walks in and says nothing.” That ain’t Mannix, though: His eyes shifty and his alliances shifting, he’s a guy who won’t shut up, his ignorance and his charisma constantly echoing through the claustrophobic confines of Minnie’s Haberdashery. Whether he’s questioning Major Marquis Warren about his Lincoln letter or proclaiming “Navajo!” Mannix is the straw that stirs the drink throughout the movie, right up until he either does or doesn’t finally shut up forever. —Katie Baker

Best quote: “Well, cut my legs off and call me Shorty!”

53. Melanie Ralston, Jackie Brown

Played by: Bridget Fonda

Melanie Ralston is, at least on the surface, the perfect Manic Stoner Dream Girl. But underneath the thick cloud of smoke, there’s a lot more there. She’s a gadfly, capable of manipulating the violent men in her life from her spot on the couch. Bridget Fonda’s snarky, laid-back performance helps turn Melanie into Lady Macbeth in a string bikini.

The way she relentlessly teases Louis about forgetting where he parked at the mall is hilarious: “Jesus, but if you two are not the biggest pair of fuckups I’ve ever met in my entire life. How did you ever rob a bank? Hey, when you robbed banks, did you forget where your car was then, too? No wonder you went to jail.” Since this is Tarantino’s adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel, her needling leads Louis to gun her down. It’s a brutal fate, but she died doing what she loved: making fun of a shitty guy. —Siegel

Best quote:

Ordell: “You know you smoke too much of that shit. That shit gonna rob you of your own ambition.”

Melanie: “Not if your ambition is to get high and watch TV.”

52. Vernita Green, Kill Bill

Played by: Vivica A. Fox

Codename Copperhead, formerly a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad that attempted to kill the Bride, Vernita Green was living the life most criminals dream of: escaping the dangerous underworld to get married, have children, and live a quiet life. She married a doctor and had a daughter, Nikki, who comes home from school one day to find her mother and the Bride in the middle of a fight. After instructing her daughter to go up to her room so she can finish speaking with her guest, Vernita loses that fight, murdered by the Bride in the first killing we witness. What sticks out most, aside from that beautiful visual Vernita painted for the “night fight” she wanted to have? It’s her vocalizing how upset she was that the Bride’s codename during their Deadly Viper Assassination Squad days was Black Mamba. —khal

Best quote: “Black Mamba. I shoulda been motherfuckin’ Black Mamba.”

51. Zoë Bell, Death Proof

Played by: Zoë Bell

Zoë Bell has worn many hats as a Tarantino collaborator—Uma Thurman’s stunt double in the Kill Bill movies, stunt coordinator on Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, acting roles in Once Upon a Time and The Hateful Eight—but her greatest accomplishment was, well, being Zoë Bell. In Death Proof, Bell plays a fictionalized version of herself as she crosses paths with a murderous stuntman (Kurt Russell) and his “death-proof” Chevy Nova. The highlight of the film is Bell executing a death-defying stunt on the hood of a ’70s Challenger—the kind of sequence where the line between reality and fiction is blurred, and all you can think about is how they managed to pull it off without Bell getting seriously hurt. The Oscars have yet to create a category awarding stunt performers, but Bell doesn’t just deserve the plaudits for Death Proof: Her entire career is a celebration of Hollywood’s most underappreciated art form. —Miles Surrey

Best quote: [While hanging on to the hood of a car for dear life.] “I’m sorry I called you a Black bitch!”

Sony Pictures Releasing

50. Brandy the Dog, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

Played by: Sayuri the American pit bull terrier

Look, as the parent of a rescue pit bull—an American Staffordshire terrier named Trina, to be precise—I can’t say that I love that a pittie is used as the weapon that kicks off the bloody Manson family takedown. At the same time, I feel a sense of … pride? If Tarantino is going to rewrite history, I’m glad a sweet pup like Brandy could be a major part in righting some awful wrongs with her giant, slobbering mouth.

Brandy shows off the full spectrum of pit bull personality: the needy baby that just wants to cuddle you, the begging brat that can’t wait 10 seconds for food, the protective guardian that just wants to protect its pack. Naturally, Sayuri won the Palm Dog award at Cannes back in 2019. Performances like hers raise the question: When will the Oscars get on board and recognize all of our good boys and girls? —Sayles

Best quote: [Pained hunger whines as if she’s never eaten before even though she’s about to dive into the biggest, most disgusting pile of dog food you’ve ever seen.]

49. Budd, Kill Bill

Played by: Michael Madsen

The only member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad to get the best of the Bride is an old sad sack who works at a strip club and lives in a trailer. Budd’s ambivalent about most things except saving his hide and making a buck—he’s in a holding pattern, not too interested in his new life but not drawn in by the temptations of the old one, either. He thinks he deserves to die, but that Beatrix Kiddo does, too. He takes her out with a shot of rock salt but lets her live—maybe he even knew she could get out of her coffin (otherwise, what was that flashlight for?). Unlike Elle or Beatrix, he doesn’t have any real enemies to keep him going, just regret and frozen margaritas. But he’s compelling because he’s a man without a mission in a revenge movie—he’s desert-worn and cash-strapped and done with all the killing, until it comes creeping up to his trailer door and good old Budd gets pulled back in, for one last job. —Helena Hunt

Best quote: “They say the number one killer of old people is retirement. People got a job to do, they tend to live a little bit longer so they can do it. I’ve always figured that warriors and their enemies share the same relationship. So now that you’re not gonna have to face your enemy no more on the battlefield, which r you filled with? Relief? Or regret?”

Sony Pictures Releasing

48. Pussycat, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

Played by: Margaret Qualley

A few scenes into Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, during a chorale rendition of Charles Manson’s hymn “Always Is Always Forever” by a group of dumpster-diving teenagers, the camera pans and focuses on Margaret Qualley’s character, Pussycat. As the chorus hits, Pussycat’s expression drops, and her cheerful singing morphs into catatonic chanting—a clever foreshadowing of the film’s looming tonal transition from California whimsy to cultist dread. In this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, the fever dream film that doubles as his love letter to ’60s L.A. reveals its biggest plot device and begins spiraling toward a rewritten history of Benedict Canyon.

While far from the film’s most iconic character, Pussycat—the underage hitchhiker based on real-life Manson follower Ruth Ann Moorehouse—is perhaps its most important. If not for her alluring gaze and charming naivete, Cliff Booth would’ve never driven to a dilapidated Spahn Ranch and later (while tripping on LSD) sensed danger after a few familiar hippies arrived at Rick Dalton’s house with murder on their minds. Though Pussycat’s presence is necessary to write this revisionist history, I wouldn’t describe her arc as “redeemable”—cult crimes aside, placing one’s bare feet on the inside windshield of a car is worthy of life imprisonment without parole. —Daniel Comer

Best quote: “GEORGE ISN’T BLIND! YOU’RE THE BLIND ONE!”

Universal

47. Archie Hicox, Inglourious Basterds

Played by: Michael Fassbender

This was a case of nominating a character for their contributions to a single scene, but it’s a doozy. At a tavern in Nazi-occupied France, some of the Basterds, including former film critic Archie Hicox, meet with German actress-turned-spy Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger). Unfortunately, the tavern is filled with drunken Nazis, and a suspicious Gestapo major (August Diehl) joins their table. What’s so great about this sequence isn’t just the inherent tension between the undercover Basterds and the Nazis, but the resigned acceptance from Archie when he accidentally gives himself away. (Said moment has since become a meme.) To know you’re moments away from death and react with such grace? Film critics were built different in the ’40s. All told, Inglourious Basterds gave Fassbender a memorable role at the start of his career—one that also allowed the actor to go out in a blaze of Nazi-killing glory. —Surrey

Best quote: “Well, if this is it, old boy, I hope you don’t mind if I go out speaking the King’s.”

46. Elle Driver, Kill Bill

Played by: Daryl Hannah

You can take your pick of any of the adversaries the Bride faces off with on her way to final boss Bill, but I’m partial to Daryl Hannah’s Elle Driver, whose cartoonish villainy looms over both Kill Bill installments. She cackles recalling people she murdered, reads facts about a venomous snake to a person dying from a bite by said snake, and enters the hospital room of her comatose enemy armed with a poison-filled syringe and a red lip. While being a cold-blooded assassin and looking hot doing it isn’t exactly unique in the Kill Bill universe, among characters whose costumes you see every year on Halloween, Elle is the only one who made it into a Sabrina Carpenter music video. Not bad for a bitch with no future! Plus, she’s the only Deadly Viper who may have survived her bout with Beatrix Kiddo—we don’t actually see her die on-screen. Yeah, she got her one good eye snatched out of her head and was trapped in a trailer with a deadly black mamba, but, y’know, at least she didn’t get her brain exposed by a katana. —Julianna Ress

Best quote: “That’s right, I killed your master. And I’m gonna kill you too, with your own sword, no less. Which in the very immediate future will become … my sword.”

45. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer

Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers would take the crown for relationship goals if they weren’t murderous pieces of shit. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny are more deserving. They’re compassionate, protective lovers and innovative business partners. Sure, it’s Pumpkin’s idea to graduate from robbing liquor stores to coffee shops, but he came to that conclusion only after Honey Bunny suggested they steal wallets from customers on their last shakedown. (They made more money from the wallets!) They also operate inside unique, understood roles: Pumpkin handles the employees, and Honey Bunny runs crowd control the only way she knows how. (“ANY OF YOU FUCKING PRICKS MOVE, AND I’LL EXECUTE EVERY MOTHERFUCKING LAST ONE OF YOU!”) Pumpkin and Honey Bunny’s relationship is the only reason they make it out of their run-in with Jules. Honey Bunny is quick to aim her gun at Jules’s head after the initial kerfuffle, and Pumpkin keeps Honey Bunny cool enough for them to leave the shop unscathed and $1,500 richer. Power. Couple. —Gayle

Best quote (Pumpkin): “I love you too, Honey Bunny.”

Best quote (Honey Bunny): “I gotta go pee. I want to go home.”

Warner Bros.

44. Clarence Worley, True Romance

Played by: Christian Slater

Quentin Tarantino didn’t direct True Romance, but he did write it, which makes so many things about the movie fall into place. Like all the radical bloodshed and quippy patter. Or, come to think of it, lead character Clarence Worley’s whole deal. An eccentric loner with an estranged father, a job at a comic store, and an encyclopedic fixation on all things martial arts or rockabilly … sound familiar? It sure is lucky for Tarantino—I mean for Clarence—that all of those things are, as the movie incants, “so cool.” One moment Clarence is romancing some sketchy pretty lady named Alabama who is, unbeknownst to him, a call girl pity-hired by his boss to show the sad sack a good time. The next minute they’re happily, hectically married, two crazy kids in great sunglasses who are, oops, on the run with a duffel of drugs!

Clarence Worley is earnest and murderous, a hep cat with nine lives—all of which could wind up being corny as hell in the wrong hands. Luckily for Tarantino—I mean Clarence—the character is shaped by the best ones: the great Christian Slater, at the peak of his charming, childlike powers, and the late director Tony Scott, whose personal soft spot for the aloha-shirted lug wound up saving Clarence (and giving us little Elvis, toddling around to Hans Zimmer’s lute tunes). But anyway, enough about the King. How about you? —Baker

Best quote: “I always said, if I had to fuck a guy … I mean had to, if my life depended on it … I’d fuck Elvis.”

Universal

43. The Bear Jew, Inglourious Basterds

Played by: Eli Roth

It’s a fine, if not less than fine, Eli Roth performance saved by a masterclass in character branding from Tarantino. Roth’s Sgt. Donny Donowitz is on this list only because of the baseball bat and the Bear Jew moniker. And that’s OK! Even Adolf Hitler (Martin Wuttke) gets sucked into the marketing funnel. The Führer demands that Donowitz never be referred to as the Bear Jew again after finding out that his Nazi trenches are gossiping that he’s some mythical, bat-swinging golem. That, of course, comes after we see Donowitz lay 19 bat swings—I slowed the YouTube video down to 0.5x speed and counted the sound effects—on a German soldier’s (Richard Sammel) head and body. It’s easily one of the most memorable moments in a film brimming with memorable moments, and that’s despite Roth going off on a technically incorrect celebratory rant immediately after the bludgeoning. Roth’s delivery is great, but if Donowitz were a true Bostonian, he’d know Teddy Williams was a lefty who couldn’t pull-hit for shit. Nuking a ball over the left-field wall onto Landsdowne Street was never in the cards for ol’ Teddy. (God, I love Reddit.) —Gayle

Best quote: “Teddy fucking Williams knocks it out of the park! Fenway Park is on its feet for Teddy fucking Ballgame. He went yard on that one, on to fucking Landsdowne Street.”

Universal

42. Bridget von Hammersmark, Inglourious Basterds

Played by: Diane Kruger

A German film star who becomes a spy for the British, Bridget Von Hammersmark won’t let a petty little objective like “ending the war” cloud her exasperation with the men around her. After she’s been shot in a basement standoff with the Nazis—while a bullet is still lodged in her leg—her annoyance with suspicions about her loyalty temporarily overwhelms the pain. And even as she uses her fame to help sneak American assassins into a film premiere that Hilter will be attending, she balks at the expectation that she’ll reaffirm the Reich’s image of Germans as hearty outdoorsmen. Kruger imbues von Hammersmark with both the confidence that comes from staggering beauty and wide renown and the paranoia born from having double-crossed nearly everyone you’ve ever met. Basterds is essentially a series of confidence games, and no one, up to and including the movie’s iconic villain, is better prepared to win them. —Thompson

Best quote: “I like smoking, drinking, and ordering in restaurants.”

Miramax

41. Nice Guy Eddie, Reservoir Dogs

Played by: Chris Penn

He doesn’t get a color; he doesn’t get a suit. But when Reservoir Dogs gets truly apocalyptic, it falls on Nice Guy Eddie—played by the almighty Chris Penn, tough-guy character actor extraordinaire whose presence is just as vital in True Romance—to deliver the Big Speech. With blood on his face and rage in his unblinking, blue eyes and the camera slowly zooming in. He is defending Mr. Blonde; he is extolling Mr. Blonde’s unfailing loyalty. He is screaming the words, “HE’S JUST GONNA DECIDE, OUT OF THE FUCKIN’ BLUE, TO RIP US OFF?” And then he pulls a gun, and his dad pulls a gun, and Mr. White pulls a gun, and Eddie screams, “LARRY, STOP POINTIN’ THAT FUCKIN’ GUN AT MY DAD,” and that’s the end of that. There are no small parts in Tarantino movies, just colossal actors who tear small-part-shaped holes in the universe. —Rob Harvilla

Best quote: “If you fuckin’ beat this prick long enough, he’ll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago Fire. Now that don’t necessarily make it fuckin’ so.”

Sony Pictures Releasing

40. Sharon Tate, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

Played by: Margot Robbie

Quentin Tarantino created his own world parallel to ours—it just exists in his movies, but he says it’s the “realer than real universe.” He started by building out that world in his signature style, but now he uses it to rewrite our world. And Sharon Tate is his most compelling work of revisionist history yet. Margot Robbie glows as Tate. She is warm and kind and irrepressibly sunny, someone we want to keep watching even though she doesn’t say much. In the movie’s best moment, she watches her own scenes in The Wrecking Crew and looks back to see the audience laughing along. They’re caught up in the fantasy of the movies, just like we get caught up in the fantasy of Tate’s life, as Tarantino retells it. He’s celebrating Tate, and he’s looking back at us in the audience to make sure we’re just as in awe of her. That’s movie magic—making us forget what’s inevitable because we’re so caught up in a gorgeous fantasy. —Hunt

Best quote: [Smiles serenely at the silver screen.]

39. Daisy Domergue, The Hateful Eight

Played by: Jennifer Jason Leigh

For much of The Hateful Eight, Daisy Domergue is a literal punching bag for bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell), whose abhorrent behavior is supposedly justified by the evil deeds his prisoner perpetrated. As Tarantino would explain in interviews, he wanted the audience to feel uneasy about Ruth’s violence and, in the spirit of the movie, shift your allegiances between different characters. But when the other shoe drops and Daisy gets the upper hand, we see the monster within: She gleefully cackles while covered in Ruth’s blood as she ends his life, repeatedly (and exhaustingly) calling Samuel L. Jackson’s Marquis Warren the n-word. It’s a powerhouse performance from Leigh, who draws your attention with each menacing glare before going off like a powder keg. —Surrey

Best quote: “When you get to hell, John, tell ’em Daisy sent ya.”

Miramax

38. Lance, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Eric Stoltz

We’ve all known, pitied, been amused by, or purchased various goods from someone like Lance. In high school, we thought they were cool. In college, we sought their services. And in adulthood, we’re disgusted by their life choices while secretly envying them enough to quietly wish we could swap places for a day or two. Lance is witty, unhurried, and the main character in a depressing PSA about wasted potential.

He’s seen things. He has stories. He’s forgotten a lot. He owns two or three colorless bathrobes that have never been washed. His apartment smells like bong water. He’s casually racist and sells heroin. All probably true. But he’s also living what some might call a dream, a childhood fantasy where sugary cereal, cartoons, and very little responsibility are for dinner every night.

Lance has no boss except the customer. He doesn’t shave or regularly get his hair cut. He’s untethered from civilized society and probably doesn’t know his social security number. Whether you see any of that as a plus or minus, this might be the most familiar, realistic portrayal of an actual human being in all of Tarantino’s movies. —Pina

Best quote: “Now this is Panda, from Mexico. Very good stuff. And that’s Bava. Different, but equally good. And that is Choco, from the Harz Mountains of Germany. Now the first two are the same, 300 a gram. Those are friend prices. But this one is a little more expensive. This one is 500 a gram. But when you shoot it, you will know where that extra money went. Now, there’s nothing wrong with these two. This is real, real, real good shit. But this one? It’s a fuckin’ madman.”

37. Lee Donowitz, True Romance

Played by: Saul Rubinek

A thinly veiled evisceration of the titan producer Joel Silver, Lee Donowitz somehow bends caricature all the way back into remarkable specificity. There’s Donowitz’s powdered-donut caking of cocaine during a traffic stop, sure, but there’s nothing cliché about the character lamenting that he has more taste in his penis than the filmmakers who work for him. Rubinek’s performance is remarkable for drawing out, simultaneously and in equal measure, the emotional impotence of the ultrarich and the genuine menace they can still project. One of the funniest bits in Tarantino’s entire filmography is Christian Slater’s Clarence gushing to Donowitz about a Vietnam War movie he produced called Coming Home in a Body Bag; Donowitz expresses gratitude for “veterans of that bullshit war,” then shows Clarence dailies from the sequel, tentatively called Body Bags II. His outburst at the assistant who betrays him has earned its place in the Ringer canon. —Thompson

Best quote: “You piece of shit. You can forget about acting for the next 20 years. Your fucking career is over. Take your fucking SAG card and burn it! You little cocksucker. I treated you like a son. You fucking stab me in the heart!”

36. Major Marquis Warren, The Hateful Eight

Played by: Samuel L. Jackson

Major Marquis Warren isn’t Samuel L. Jackson’s most memorable Tarantino character, just as The Hateful Eight isn’t Tarantino’s most memorable film. However, Warren is still a great role for Jackson—and, of course, he absolutely nails it.

Separating fact from fiction is at the heart of The Hateful Eight. And from Warren’s famous (forged) letter from Abraham Lincoln to his extremely graphic story about the day he killed Chester Charles Smithers, it isn’t easy telling the Union Army veteran’s truths from his lies. Warren is perceptive and calculated, which is crucial to his survival as a Black American in 1870 who makes his living as a bounty hunter. His distrusting nature also allows him to quickly recognize that something is amiss at Minnie’s Haberdashery when he arrives with his motley crew of travelers.

These character traits all lead Warren to earn his place as one of just two survivors left standing at the end of the film, as what should have been a simple stay at a familiar lodge concludes in a bloody crime scene. (OK, so Warren is technically lying down, bleeding to death, at the end of The Hateful Eight, but he’s still breathing as the credits begin to roll. That fact alone puts him in a better spot than just about everyone else who appears in this movie.) The Hateful Eight won’t go down as Tarantino’s best film if and when he finally decides to retire from directing, and the movie’s dubious depiction of race relations—with Warren at its center—is one of the main reasons why it remains one of the filmmaker’s most divisive works. But Jackson and Tarantino’s collaborations always lead to entertaining results, as uncomfortable as they often can be. —Daniel Chin

Best quote: “Anybody opens their mouth, gonna get a bullet. Anybody moves a little weird, little sudden, gonna get a bullet. Not a warning. Not a question. A bullet.”

Sony Pictures Releasing

35. Trudi Fraser, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

Played by: Julia Butters

Tarantino’s movies are full of tiny characters who unlock meaning and purpose within the protagonists. In the case of Trudi Fraser, the word “tiny” works in multiple ways: the 8-year-old Method-actor-in-the-making scene partner to Rick Dalton reminds him of the beauty of Hollywood after years within the system have ground him down into a loogie-hawking husk of a man, and she gives him a shoulder to cry on as he faces the harsh reality of time. Trudi and Rick’s conversation about Easy Breezy—the has-been character in Rick’s book, a stand-in for his career now and, as Rick puts it, Trudi’s “in 15 years”—is one of Once Upon a Time’s true grace notes, a bit of perfect rapport between Leonardo DiCaprio and the astoundingly precocious Julia Butters. But the second time Rick is brought to tears in front of Trudi is even better, when she lets the old man know that he can still bring it in front of the camera. “That was the best acting I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” she says. Rick’s not too old to notch a win, and Trudi’s not too young to know brilliance when she sees it. —Gruttadaro

Best quote: “I believe it’s the job of an actor—and I say ‘actor,’ not ‘actress,’ because the word ‘actress’ is nonsensical—it’s the actor’s job to avoid impediments to their performance. It’s the actor’s job to strive for 100 percent effectiveness. Naturally, we never succeed. But it’s the pursuit that’s meaningful.”

Warner Bros.

34. Drexl Spivey, True Romance

Played by: Gary Oldman

The pitch is simple enough: a white pimp with dreadlocks who speaks a little bit like Trae the Truth and is obsessed with kung fu movies. Gary Oldman’s Drexl Spivey (again: Drexl Spivey) technically appears in two scenes of True Romance, but the first—a cocaine buy, dotted with detailed cunnilingus talk, that he reveals to be a setup—merely hints at how utterly bizarre but sincerely terrifying he’ll be in his real showcase. When Clarence (Christian Slater) shows up at Drexl’s home and essentially tries to buy the freedom of Alabama (Patricia Arquette), his new wife and one of Drexl’s call girls, Drexl treats a hanging lamp like an extension of his id, baits Clarence with an egg roll, and offers an eerily sober read of the nervous newlywed’s personality. That he dies is inevitable—and beside the point entirely. —Thompson

Best quote: “He must have thought it was white boy day. It ain’t white boy day, is it?”

Miramax

33. Mr. Orange, Reservoir Dogs

Played by: Tim Roth

In Tarantino movies, the characters are always acting. There are the literal auditions and TV Western shoots; there are the innumerable bluffs and con jobs that drive the majority of his plots. (In True Romance, a pair of cops—listening to a life-and-death struggle through a concealed wire—literally exhort their cooperating witness to “Act, motherfucker!”) There is no better example of this than what has become known as “the commode story.”

Tim Roth’s Mr. Orange, an undercover cop, is trying to establish his bona fides as a criminal and thereby gain the trust of the thieves he’s trying to catch. To do so, he’s given a literal script for a story about a close call with law enforcement in a train station bathroom. We see him balk at the length of the monologue; we see him run lines in his apartment; we see him adopt the mannerisms of this imagined small-time weed dealer, revising the character as he goes. And when he finally performs the scene, the fear he communicates is real—because he’s in the presence of real criminals, sure, but also because he’s finally embodying the role. —Thompson

Best quote: “Excuse me for not being the world’s biggest Madonna fan.”

32. Mickey and Mallory, Natural Born Killers

Played by: Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis

Tarantino can hate this movie all he wants. I still love it. Mickey and Mallory Knox are the best thing to happen to mass murder since Charles Manson. Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis turn the characters up to 11, too. The film itself is a bit of a drawn out mess, but Woody and Juliette somehow keep the film upright from start to finish. Insane, sicko performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Downey Jr.—RIP to a true content king, Wayne Gale—definitely help, but it’s still the Mickey and Mallory show the whole way. Woody also finally parts ways with his receding blond locks for this movie, shaving his head bald on camera and never looking back—a transformational performance, truly. (If there’s a better way to call it quits up top, let me know. I’m nearing the end on the hair front and considering going full Mickey Mode. Wait, not full Mickey. You get what I’m saying.) —Gayle

Best quote (Mickey): “I was thrown into a flaming pit of scum, forgotten by God.” OR “We all know we’re no-good pieces of shit from the time we could breathe. After a while, you kind of become bad.”

Best quote (Mallory): “That’s the worst fucking head I’ve ever got in my life.”

Columbia Pictures

31. Stephen Warren, Django Unchained

Played by: Samuel L. Jackson

The development of Stephen Warren’s layered psyche and his life before Django Unchained doesn’t interest me much. Neither does his quisling nature, nor his acerbic one-liners delivered with aplomb by Samuel L. Jackson in an all-time comedic performance. No, what’s most compelling about Stephen is how he runs Candyland with an evil, subservient brilliance that stands in direct contrast to Django’s passion-driven defiance. Their dichotomy is the quiet catalyst of the film, lurking beneath the bluster of Calvin Candie and the bombast of Dr. Schultz.

Their yin-and-yang relationship and give-and-take warfare culminate in a fitting final scene, wherein Stephen tosses aside his cane and delivers what he thinks will be one of his patented smart-ass rejoinders. “I count six shots,” he says, smugly assuming Django doesn’t have the ammo to finish him off. “I count two guns,” Django quips back. Stephen would die moments later as Django and Broomhilda rode off into freedom, but at least Tarantino afforded Jackson’s character the last words in this beef: “DJANGO YOU UPPITY SON OF A—.” Kaboom, out with a bang. —Comer

Best quote: “Who the hell you callin’ snowball, horse boy?”

30. Floyd, True Romance

Played by: Brad Pitt

When Pitt initially read Tarantino’s True Romance screenplay, it was because director Tony Scott had him in mind for a larger role. But ultimately Pitt—who has admitted that he didn’t quite “get” the movie at first—took a liking to this one loser named Floyd, a deadbeat roommate who is both an extreme chaos agent and also hella inert. (If you can’t spot the Floyd on the sofa, then maybe you are the Floyd.)

Part Jeff Spicoli, part Kato Kaelin, Floyd uses his mind solely for fashioning bongs out of honey bears and positioning fans just so. He uses up all the toilet paper then has the gall to yell, “Get some beer! And some cleaning products!” He is chill with any and all gangsters who show up at his door, offering them a hit and telling them precisely (well, kinda precisely) where they can go find his roommate and his friend. He has a Rasta beret on his head and crumbs on his shirt and blood on his hands and he does not appreciate being con-den-scended to, man. Does Floyd live? We’ll never know, though I think that guy’s a survivor. What we do know is that his spirit lived on. —Baker

Best quote: “Don’t condeNscend me, man. I’ll fuckin’ kill ya, man.”

29. Pai Mei, Kill Bill

Played by: Gordon Liu

Every single crash zoom on this dude—and there really are so many of them—takes me out. Every stroke of his beard. Every put-down that he spits at the Bride in the course of her training. He’s such a gratifying homage to old-school kung fu movies as a sort of comic relief, yes, but also a tremendous teacher. And, really, I think the face of the balance that’s so well struck in Kill Bill: between gut-busting nonsense and brutal intensity. —Justin Charity

Best quote: “It’s my arm now. I’ll do what I want with it.”

Dimension Films

28. Stuntman Mike, Death Proof

Played by: Kurt Russell

What do you mean you don’t know Stuntman Mike? Do you know the show The Virginian? He was Gary Clarke’s stunt double before he got the scar over his left eye, and then when that show eventually became The Men FromShiloh, he doubled Lee Majors. Still nothing? He was Robert Urich’s driving double for practically the entire third season of Vegas and he followed Urich to his show that came after, Gavilan! OK, if not Mike, then maybe his brother, Stuntman Bob? God damnit, never mind. Mike is the killer fucking psychopath who murdered women with his death-proof stunt car.

Kurt Russell puts on a goddamn show in this movie. The writing raises the floor, but Russell breaks the roof of the character. How he eats the nacho grande platter, the awkward near-sneeze, the poem delivery, the “MY BOOK” rant—all of it. His mannerisms and delivery are so fun. He’s terrifyingly magnetic. And to finish with him sobbing like a baby and being passed around the three women for 37 punches and one roundhouse kick?! No notes. —Gayle

Dimension Films

Best quote: “Well, because there was a 50-50 shot on whether you’d be going left. You see, we’re both going left. You could have just as easily been going left too, and if that was the case, it would have been awhile before you started getting scared. But since you’re going the other way, I’m afraid you’re gonna have to start getting scared ... immediately!”

Miramax

27. Butch Coolidge, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Bruce Willis

Beginning with Captain Koons’s unforgettable story about the gold watch, which survived multiple wars (and some difficult hiding places) as it was passed down through generations of the Coolidge family, Butch’s chapter in Pulp Fiction might be its most outrageous. Butch, played by Bruce Willis, is an aging boxer who’s made a deal with Marsellus Wallace to take a dive in his final fight. But Butch double-crosses him, betting on himself to win instead, as he tries to leave boxing behind and skip town with his girlfriend Fabienne.

Butch may not be as flashy or as memorable as some of Pulp Fiction’s other antiheroes, and he’s not a great guy by any means. He kills one man in the ring, then kills another man as he’s exiting the bathroom, and he doesn’t seem to feel the least bit bad about either. Butch also throws a TV and violently yells at Fabienne after he realizes that she’s left behind his precious gold watch at his apartment. But he still has a heart buried beneath his classic tough-guy veneer.

Butch’s defining moment comes at the pawn shop, as he escapes his captors and faces a crucial decision: He could either run away and leave Marsellus to a pair of racist rapists, or save Marsellus from the horrific abuse that he nearly faced himself. Despite Marsellus actively trying to kill him, Butch chooses the latter. He grabs a katana off the wall and uses it to kill one of their captors, while leaving the fate of the other one, Zed, in Marsellus’s hands.

When Butch returns to Fabienne on Zed’s motorcycle—sorry, Zed’s chopper—he tells her almost nothing about his ridiculous morning, or even anything about their new ride save for the fact that it belonged to Zed. “Who’s Zed?” Fabienne asks him.

“Zed’s dead, baby,” Butch replies. “Zed’s dead.”

Butch gets overshadowed by all the other iconic characters and performances that Pulp Fiction has to offer, but he still plays a central role in the film’s interconnected quartet of stories and remains a big reason why they all fit together so well. —Chin

Best quote: “Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.”

26. Ordell Robbie, Jackie Brown

Played by: Samuel L. Jackson

In a film oeuvre overflowing with sadistic, self-absorbed, peculiar-looking psychopaths, Ordell Robbie might take the cake. Born from the crime novelist Elmore Leonard (whose Rum Punch Tarantino adapted for Jackie Brown), he’s a menacing arms dealer slicker than a waterslide covered in olive oil. When his tongue can’t get him out of a jam, Ordell—in what might be the most devious and mesmerizing performance of Samuel L. Jackson’s career—lets his gun talk.

Robbie’s violence shocks and disturbs. He’s a horror movie villain with a thin, six-inch long rattail dangling from his chin that screams “murderous sociopath.” His dark side is pitch black.

Like all the most compelling bad guys in motion picture history, though, Robbie has dimensions. He’s unpredictable, entertaining, and astute. In between the merciless bloodshed, every other time he opens his mouth it’s hard not to nod along with whatever comes out. “A 44-year-old Black woman caught with less than two ounces, they calling that shit ‘intent’. The same thing happen to a movie star, they call it ‘possession.’” —Pina

Best quote: “She’s my fine little surfer gal. You know, she ain’t pretty as she used to be and she bitch a whole lot more than she used to. But, she white.”

25. Bill, Kill Bill

Played by: David Carradine

If you thought Beatrix Kiddo taking on the entire Crazy 88 felt like long odds, consider what Tarantino set himself up for with Kill Bill: Vol. 2. How could Bill—who had been absent for almost all of two whole-ass movies—possibly live up to his place at the top of the hit list, much less in the title? Kill Bill is a bloody, globe-trotting epic in which Beatrix skirts the line between life and death and enacts her revenge through unbelievable carnage. And at the end of her journey is just some guy sitting alone in his house. The showdown with Bill isn’t a boss fight. It’s a conversation that’s been a long time coming. And it only works because Bill works—because he’s not the outline of a villain, but strange and philosophical and eminently dangerous. Even in Beatrix’s story, Bill takes over the finale. He holds the cards. He tries to tape the pilot of a new Ringer-Verse podcast. His presence is undeniable. Bill had so much to live up to, and in the biggest moment of the biggest story Tarantino ever told, he delivers. —Mahoney

Best quote: “I … overreacted.”

Columbia Pictures

24. Django Freeman, Django Unchained

Played by: Jamie Foxx

Django Freeman is a man of a few words, but when he does speak, the guy comes with some heaters. “I like the way you die, boy,” he says after ruthlessly shooting Big John Brittle in the chest, cleverly alluding to Brittle’s cruel whipping of Django’s wife earlier in the film. Django Unchained is a fascinating case study in screenwriting—a screenplay that won Tarantino an Oscar, mind you—because its protagonist doesn’t really go through a classic journey of growth. Yes, on the surface, Django changes enormously—he goes from enslaved to a free man and an elite bounty hunter—but emotionally, Django is unwavering. He is driven by the sole mission of rescuing Broomhilda and enacting revenge on the people who harmed her, and that remains a constant until the very last shot of the film. But Django doesn’t need to experience a spiritual evolution to go down as one of Tarantino’s finest characters—it’s more than enough to deconstruct the white savior narrative and take agency over his own destiny. Also, he’s very fucking good at shooting guns and dons several iconic fits over the course of the movie—that alone makes him a captivating presence to watch on the screen. —Aric Jenkins

Best quote: “D-J-A-N-G-O. The D is silent.”

Miramax

23. Captain Koons, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Christopher Walken

William Faulkner, reviewing his rival Ernest Hemingway’s lithe, symmetrical opus, The Old Man and the Sea, once managed, with stunning clarity, to sum up the work in a paltry two words: “His best.” I am here, in this character ranking, quoting Faulkner writing about Hemingway, to tell you the same thing about a ridiculous character sharing a very sad and very silly story to another character. His name is Koons. Even if the rankings don’t reflect it, in my mind, he’s the best of the film and of all the characters in Quentin Tarantino’s twisted cinematic mind.

The reasons why are myriad. The way that Koons (a recently returned former Vietnam POW played by Christopher Walken) segues flawlessly through three generations of family and military history: the purchasing, protecting, and passing down of a wristwatch from father to son to grandson. The subtle hand gestures and peak-Walken inflection right before Koons tells a young descendant of these men that in the throes of captivity that child’s father hid this watch, “in the one place he knew he could hide something, his ass.” How Walken holds up the little gold watch, clenched (sorry) between his pointer, middle finger, and thumb, even as he lets loose a string of racial epithets and TMI revelations—the crowning sentiment of which is not that the man with the watch up “his ass” died of “dysentery,” but that Koons had picked up the mantle of said man, and “hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass” for no less than “two years.”

No notes. His best. Required reading. Top of the mountain. Faulkner ended that review of Old Man and the Sea, by writing adroitly, “Praise God that whatever made and loves and pities Hemingway and me kept him from touching it any further.” Praise God, for both my and everyone else’s sake, that Quentin didn’t either. —Pryor

Best quote: “Five long years he wore this watch, up his ass.”

Miramax

22. Mr. Blonde, Reservoir Dogs

Played by: Michael Madsen

Look, you ain’t gotta like him. It’s way better for your loved ones if you don’t! But Mr. Blonde—as portrayed with outrageously suave malevolence by Michael Madsen—is the most magnetic and disturbing and, above all, memorable presence in Tarantino’s merciless directorial debut (and yes, this is the sadistic guy who dances around and cuts the cop’s ear off). It is thus Mr. Blonde’s job to show you that in this universe, tremendous charm and garish ultraviolence are inseparable, and the presence you are most drawn to—look at how handsome he is; look at how cute he is, playfully wrestling with Nice Guy Eddie!—is gonna do the gnarliest shit you’ve ever seen on-screen that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. —Harvilla

Best quote: “Are you gonna bark all day little doggie? Or are you gonna bite?”

Columbia Pictures

21. Dr. King Shultz, Django Unchained

Played by: Christoph Waltz

Dr. King Schultz is a German dentist turned bounty hunter with a faithful, nodding horse named Fritz. That alone tells you just about everything you need to know about the quirky duo who set the tone for Django Unchained the moment they arrive on-screen in the film’s opening scene. Schultz, played by Christoph Waltz, is loquacious, charming, and kindhearted. But he’s also a bit of an enigma to anyone who’s fortunate—or otherwise very unfortunate—enough to cross his path, a strange man who can at once be disarmingly polite and a ruthless killer. As the one responsible for freeing Django and training him to become a legendary bounty hunter himself, Schultz is crucial to Django’s hero’s journey, and Waltz’s scene-stealing performance as the former dentist makes that journey all the more captivating to watch unfold.

Schultz, whose hatred of slavery ultimately gets him killed, couldn’t be more different from Inglourious Basterds’ Hans Landa, the infamous Nazi—known as “the “Jew Hunter”—whom Waltz played in Tarantino’s 2009 film. Waltz won Oscars for both supporting roles, showcasing the actor’s impressive range and ability to elevate Tarantino’s characters. —Chin

Best quote: “Mister Candie, normally I would say, ‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ but since what ‘auf Wiedersehen’ actually means is ‘till I see you again,’ and since I never wish to see you again, to you, sir, I say, ‘Goodbye.’”

20. Louis Gara, Jackie Brown

Played by: Robert De Niro

Considering that Robert De Niro left the ’90s with two Oscar nominations, collaborations with multiple auteur directors, and credits for some of the most iconic characters of the decade, it’s hard to say any role of his in that era is underrated. And yet his turn as the ex-con Louis Gara in 1997’s Jackie Brown reveals a layer to the legendary actor that isn’t appreciated enough: his ability to play a dumb, stoned-out shithead. Sure, Louis has a quiet rage building inside him that leads him to kill a woman in broad daylight during a money-smuggling job after she annoys him a little bit, and he’s stupid enough to confess this to the guy who will ultimately kill him for fucking up the job so badly. But if you don’t get on his nerves? Honestly, seems like a pretty chill dude to pack a bowl and watch some Chicks Who Love Guns with. You might just have to help him find where he parked his car afterward. —Ress

Best quote:

Ordell: “Is she dead?”

Louis: “Well, I-I- … pretty much.”

Miramax

19. Mr. Pink, Reservoir Dogs

Played by: Steve Buscemi

Mr. Pink is the only goddamn professional in the heist operation. Mr. Brown and Mr. Blue die early. Mr. White is soft. Mr. Blonde is a headcase. Mr. Orange is a rat. Nice Guy Eddie is a daddy’s boy, and his daddy is a bad judge of character. Mr. Pink tags a few cops, identifies that they have a rat straightaway, and maintains a level head better than anyone through everything. It shouldn’t shock you that he’s also the only one who secured the diamonds and lived to tell the tale. (I know he probably served a long sentence after his off-screen run-in with the cops, but at least he survived!) That said, no one is without flaws: I disagree that Mr. Purple is a better name than Mr. Pink, and everyone should tip waitresses. —Gayle

Best quote: “Uh-uh, I don’t tip.”

Miramax

18. Gogo Yubari, Kill Bill

Played by: Chiaki Kuriyama

Gogo Yubari had all the intangibles. She was a master of the meteor hammer and a top assassin in O-Ren’s operation at 17. Unlike the rest of the Crazy 88, Gogo didn’t crumble under the bright lights. She never let The Bride and her myth dull her fury or bloodlust, and there are many to this day (including yours truly) who believe she was robbed of a clear victory against Beatrix for *plot reasons.*

In a film drowning in loving pastiche and visual flair, Gogo has managed to retain her place among the more iconic characters from Kill Bill. Before Suzanne Collins and Hunger Games pushed a 2000s dystopian movie about a group of Japanese students killing each other on a deserted island into the popular consciousness, Tarantino was on the ground floor. Chiaki Kuriyama’s portrayal of Gogo is a direct homage to her character in Battle Royale, as if Tarantino choppered Takako Chigusa from one murderous island to another. Both fictional women carry the same sense of righteous madness behind their eyes even as cherry blood drips from their sockets.

Long live Gogo. The world didn’t deserve you. —Charles Holmes

Best quote: [Sound of double-sided mace picking up velocity.]

Warner Bros.

17. Alabama Whitman, True Romance

Played by: Patricia Arquette

Introduced in dreamy, Badlands-aping voiceover, Alabama Worley (née Whitman) is the bleeding, beating heart of True Romance—and the prototype of Tarantino’s damsels in distress. She’s a Florida peach who’s too sweet to be a call girl and too innocent not to fall for the first nerd she comes across. She’s a comic book geek’s (and, we could assume, Tarantino’s) dream girl, as happy to watch kung fu movies in a dingy Detroit apartment as she is to go on the lam in blue cowboy boots and a cow-print skirt. But more than his fantasy, she’s also Tarantino’s very first bloody, avenging heroine. Like Beatrix Kiddo, Shosanna Dreyfus, and Daisy Domergue after her, Alabama gets put through the wringer (by a pre-Sopranos James Gandolfini—and even he can’t help but admire her gumption) before improvising her way to blood-soaked victory with a corkscrew, an Elvis bust, hairspray, and a lighter. She laughs through the pain, just happy to get back to her beloved—a lesson in Zen, or maybe just in settling for a good man who’d kill your pimp. —Hunt

Best quote: “If you gave me a million years to ponder, I never would have guessed that true romance and Detroit would go together.”

16. O-Ren Ishii, Kill Bill

Played by: Lucy Liu

When I first watched Kill Bill: Vol. 1, I thought, Surely the Bride won’t kill her. But, alas, revenge is a dish best served cold (Klingon proverb), and sometimes it leaves you feeling cold, too, as you watch the grand and graceful O-Ren Ishii slip to the ground, scalpless. O-Ren’s own revenge story is nested inside Kill Bill’s larger one, and we can see, in an alternate world, the Cottonmouth as the lead of her own bloody franchise, her red suit as iconic as the Bride’s yellow one, her plotting and path of destruction as bittersweet as her rival’s. O-Ren’s set piece is the grandest in the duology because she’s the worthiest opponent—and the worthiest opponents are the ones we least want to see go down. She was meant to rule the yakuza another day, and I think that in a different Tarantino story, she did. —Hunt

Best quote: “Silly rabbit. Trix are for kids.”

15. Marsellus Wallace, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Ving Rhames

Marsellus Wallace might be the most quotable mob boss in cinematic history. He spends Pulp Fiction dispensing one piece of hard-ass wisdom after another. “The night of the fight, you might feel a slight sting,” he tells washed-up boxer Butch Coolidge as he’s paying him to throw his next match. “That’s pride fucking with you. Fuck pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps.”

Marsellus is intimidating. He’s unflinching. And thanks to circumstances out of his control, he’s astoundingly vulnerable. There are few actors who can pull all those things together, and Ving Rhames is one of them. The way he plays off Bruce Willis in their final scene together—after Butch saves Marsellus from redneck rapists—is both crushing and life-affirming. “Yeah, we cool,” Marsellus says, ending their beef. The line, delivered with a mix of extreme pain and extreme relief, will stick with me for the rest of my life. —Siegel

Best quote: “You see, his profession is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don’t.”

14. Mr. White, Reservoir Dogs

Played by: Harvey Keitel

Has there ever been a character as unsuited for his world as Loose-Lips-McGee White? I don’t believe his backstory. He’s lying. No repeat bank robber behaves like this. You meet a guy. He’s on a heist with you. He has an eerily well-rehearsed story about a drug deal and a commode. He wears a leather jacket. You’ve been told not to tell any of your posse members a thing about yourself. Your identity is kept so secret that you’re named after various colors and use prefixes like New York Times reporters. And you, knowing all of this, choose to tell this leather-jacket-wearing rando YOUR FUCKING HOMETOWN???????

Friend. Buddy. Pal. What are we doing? You didn’t get even a teensy weensy narc vibe? Not with the clearance undercover jacket? Not even when the stickup fizzles because (as you said 50-fucking-leven times) there was very clearly a rat amongst you? Not even when Mr. Fellow Bankrobber takes the time to shoot (an admittedly batshit) coconspirator to save the life of a cop? Or when the guy who orchestrated the entire robbery—who you’ve known for years—tells you that buddy is a cop?

Oh buddy. Mr. White, the Icarus of overly trusting robbers. Rest easy, sweet summer child. A great hang, but not long for this world. —Pryor

Best quote: “You shoot me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize.”

Universal

13. Shosanna, Inglourious Basterds

Played by: Mélanie Laurent

Shosanna’s plot to eliminate the Nazi high command is so daring and inventive that you almost wish she could take credit for pulling it off alone (as satisfying as it is to see the Basterds gun down Hitler and make the whole cinema go boom). History might not remember Shosanna’s role in ending World War II, but we, the audience, can certainly appreciate her act of vengeance. Shosanna’s played expertly by Mélanie Laurent—a perfect blend of solemnity and snark that gives the character an effortless, detached cool. Her constant rebuffs of Frederick Zoller are a film highlight, yet Shosanna still displays a tinge of empathy after shooting the Nazi war hero—the realization that perhaps Frederick wasn’t just a uniform, after all, but a human being placed in a hopelessly dire situation. Unfortunately, it’s that very realization that gets Shosanna killed, but in true Tarantino fashion, it’s a gorgeous, cinematic death scene complete with slow-motion close-ups and a rousing score. —Jenkins

Best quote: “If you are so desperate for a French girlfriend, I suggest you try Vichy.”

12. Max Cherry, Jackie Brown

Played by: Robert Forster

“Sex is not part of my vision of cinema,” Quentin Tarantino said a few years back, and by and large, he’s stuck to that. With the exception of the Louis Gara–Melanie Ralston moments from Jackie Brown—which are largely played for laughs—and the sexual violence in the Pulp Fiction pawnshop scene, the very idea of sex barely exists in Tarantino’s filmography. (Foot massages, on the other hand …) Going further, there’s even very little romance in Tarantino films—the most famous Tarantino wedding ends with the bride getting shot in the head, which kicks off a yearslong, continent-crossing revenge spree.

But within this largely loveless cinematic universe, there is one hopeless romantic: Max Cherry, the Jackie Brown bail bondsman who becomes smitten with the title character. You can see the moment when he fully falls for her: as Jackie basks in the sunlight, wearing a bathrobe while “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” plays from the nearby speakers. (It’s filmed as tenderly as any sex scene, showing that Quentin does have a romantic streak in him.) For all of Tarantino’s loud and brash characters, the reserved Cherry is one of his best—lovestruck enough to help Jackie with a lucrative confidence game but grounded enough to know he can’t follow her to Madrid. He’s worse off for watching her leave but better off for having met her. At least there’s always that Delfonics tape to comfort him. —Sayles

Best quote: “Black’s fine.”

Universal

11. Lt. Aldo Raine, Inglourious Basterds

Played by: Brad Pitt

While he gets top billing, Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine doesn’t have a lot of screentime in Inglourious Basterds; when he does show up, however, he makes it count. The commanding officer of the Basterds, Aldo is very clear about what he expects from his men: killing Nazis to the tune of collecting “100 Nazi scalps” each. Aldo makes for a fascinating foil to Christoph Waltz’s Hans Landa: loud, brash, and full of cigar-chomping swagger. It’s a role perfectly suited for Pitt, who dials it up to an 11 in scenes where he’s interrogating Nazis or attempting—and that’s being very generous—to pose as an Italian filmmaker. Watch Inglourious Basterds enough times, and you won’t be able to resist impersonating Aldo butchering the pronunciation of buongiorno. To which I say: Bravissimo, Brad. —Surrey

Best quote: “Now, I don’t know about y’all, but I sure as hell didn’t come down from the goddamn Smoky Mountains, cross 5,000 miles of water, fight my way through half of Sicily, and jump out of a fuckin’ air-o-plane to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity. Nazi ain’t got no humanity. They’re the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin’, mass-murderin’ maniac and they need to be dee-stroyed. That’s why any and every son of a bitch we find wearin’ a Nazi uniform, they’re gonna die.”

Columbia Pictures

10. Calvin J. Candie, Django Unchained

Played by: Leonardo DiCaprio

Quentin’s quintessential midwit—a cotton plantation owner who spends his smoke-filled, blood-soaked leisure engaging in sophomoric rationalizations of the cruel domination he exerts over the people he’s enslaved. Thank God this guy didn’t live to sign into Twitter. So sweaty and inadequate is Calvin J. Candie that he manages to humiliate the logic of the slave state while somehow thinking he’s its cleverest spokesman, that he’s in on the contradictions, that he’s no barbarian, that the people he’s enslaved actually love him and are better off with him, etc.; Tarantino gives us an enslaver who’s somehow more obnoxious than a dead-eyed and straightforwardly hateful cracker of the whip. —Charity

Best quote: “Why don’t they just rise up and kill the whites?!”

9. Winston “The Wolf” Wolfe, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Harvey Keitel

In a universe of dopey henchmen, twitchy stick-up kids, and drug-addled trophy wives, Winston Wolfe is a competent and electric balm. If Pulp Fiction revels in the degenerate lives and loves of L.A.’s underbelly then Wolfe is the rare beacon of order amid the dysfunction.

He’s met every type of Vincent and Jules, and their car covered in blood and cranium particles is far from his first. The potency of Wolfe is in his brevity and assuredness; he understands that every man is an “oak man” if you throw enough cash their way. There’s not a wasted word or movement, just the work. His plan isn’t exactly genius—clean the blood, cover the seats, go to the junkyard—which makes Jackson and Travolta’s reactions to it all the funnier. Keitel’s portrayal of the no-nonsense fixer teases an entire history that’s just out of reach of the film’s viewers. The singular joy of the character is that once you’ve met him, you can’t envision a Tarantino world without him. —Holmes

Best quote: “Well, let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks quite yet.”

Sony Pictures Releasing

8. Cliff Booth, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

Played by: Brad Pitt

Cliff Booth is the kind of friend everyone wants. I mean, having someone who’s willing to drive you all around L.A. and actually makes it seem pretty fun is enough in itself, but he just seems like a good hang all around. He’ll have a Bloody Mary with you at Musso & Frank, fix stuff up around your house, and tell you you’re “Rick fucking Dalton” when you need to hear it most. He’s a laid back dude who doesn’t sweat the small stuff—even if the small stuff is, um, possibly murdering his wife—but he can kick the shit out of pretty much anyone. It’s the role that won Brad Pitt his first acting Oscar for a reason (even though that should’ve been his role in Moneyball, but I digress). And, yeah, he’s really handsome. To all the people in the audience who cheered when Cliff took his shirt off during my screening of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood in 2019, this one’s for you. —Ress

Best quote: *click click*

Miramax

7. Mia Wallace, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Uma Thurman

She gets to be on the poster. She gets the “Son of a Preacher Man” intro. She gets an intercom and a home security system so she can say, “Go make yourself a drink, and I’ll be down in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” She gets a line or two or three of cocaine. She gets the loving shot of her bare feet. She gets the $5 shake. She doesn’t get uncomfortable during uncomfortable silences. (“Why do we feel it’s necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?”) She gets the urge to dance. She gets the dance contest trophy. She, uh, gets into a brief medical emergency. She gets jolted out of that brief medical emergency in the most harrowing and hilarious way possible. She gets to tell her dumb Fox Force Five joke. She gets away relatively unscathed. In the end, she gets taken out so she can do whatever she wants. Now, if you’ll excuse her, she’s got to go powder her nose. —Harvilla

Best quote: “You can get a steak here, daddy-o. Don’t be a [draws a rectangle on-screen].”

Sony Pictures Releasing

6. Rick Dalton, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

Played by: Leonardo DiCaprio

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is a movie about the town’s intoxicating

mix of failure and success; how one can’t exist without the other; how one man’s failure might be another man’s success; how success might seem like failure until you put on a different pair of sunglasses. Rick Dalton represents both sides of this coin. In one light, he’s a blubbering has-been; a knock-off Steve McQueen whose only real friend is his driver; a pretty face for the prettier hero to vanquish; a man stuck in spurs watching the world pass him by; a miserable drunk, eight god damn whiskey sours deep, who can’t remember his fucking lines. In a different light, though, he’s a legend. He’s the one who his next-door neighbor, Sharon Tate, is fangirling over. He’s the guy turning a guest spot on Lancer into an acting tour de force. He’s the one who gets the job done, god dammit. They don’t make ’em like him anymore, and that’s the point.

He’s also a menace on the blender, and can work a flamethrower pretty well too. —Gruttadaro

Best quote: [After using a flamethrower.] “All right, that’s too hot. Anything we can do about the heat?”

Miramax

5. Vincent Vega, Pulp Fiction

Played by: John Travolta

There’s a specific way that John Travolta delivers “They call it a Royale With Cheese” that feels conjured by the gods. Travolta elongates and luxuriates in the word “cheese” as if he’s making love to the noun. His character spent three years in Europe and the most important cultural exchange he can muster is explaining the difference in McDonald’s food items to Samuel L. Jackson. This is an L.A. bumpkin as charming as he is stupid.

For the next two and a half hours, Vincent Vega proves to be one of the most ineffective gangsters in modern cinema. He accidentally executes a man in broad daylight, almost kills his boss’s wife, and quibbles with a mafia fixer sent to clean up his mess. At every turn it’s unclear what qualifications he has for this job, besides a dubious moral center and a raging heroin problem. And still there’s something lovable and magnetic about Vega—an off-kilter vibration that simultaneously clashes and harmonizes with the rest of the film. Travolta’s then-waning movie star wattage is warped into a character with seemingly no redeeming qualities besides his ability to do the twist. In essence, he’s “one charming motherfuckin’ pig,” in a world of filthy animals. —Holmes

Best quote: “So you’re gonna go out there, drink your drink, say, ‘Goodnight, I’ve had a very lovely evening,’ go home, and jack off. And that’s all you’re gonna do.”

4. Jackie Brown, Jackie Brown

Played by: Pam Grier

For a film like Jackie Brown, Tarantino’s homage to blaxploitation, it’s dope that he would write a role like this for a legend of that era like Pam Grier (Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Sheba, Baby) to really sink her teeth into. Jackie, a flight attendant, is mixed up with illegal arms dealer Ordell Robbie, smuggling money for him on flights from Mexico to the United States. She gets caught with money and coke by the detectives and agents investigating Ordell, and the one thing Jackie doesn’t want to do is more jail time. Jackie then concocts a dangerous scheme to fool Ordell into thinking she will help him smuggle in one large sum of money while having the feds thinking she is helping them when really, her ultimate plan is to make her exit with Ordell’s cash. Grier’s performance is perfect; she exudes cool, looks great, and steps into a unique role for Black women, especially in Tarantino films. Jackie made the plan, and Jackie took the risks. Grier stuck the landing, pulling it all together with a performance that most wouldn’t have seen coming in a film many wouldn’t have predicted that Tarantino would make. —khal

Best quote: “I couldn’t wait to get home last night and wash the jail outta my hair.”

Universal

3. Hans Landa, Inglourious Basterds

Played by: Christoph Waltz

What if Hercule Poirot were a smiling Nazi? is a fucked-up premise, but the kind of fucked-up premise that can really take a movie places. Part of the magic of Basterds is that Christoph Waltz is so magnetic and Hans is so dizzyingly clever that you almost—almost!—want to see him put all the clues together. Then you remember what he’s after, and who’s hiding under the floorboards, and what’s at stake, but it’s too late: the giant grin has already left Landa’s face and you realize, slowly, that he had the answers all along. We weren’t watching the solving of a mystery, or even an interrogation; we were watching an evil, meticulous man carefully lay his trap. Tarantino built a whole empire on writing characters who can completely dominate the audience’s attention. None of them can match the absolute stranglehold that Hans Landa has over the opening scene of Inglourious Basterds, where he pulls high drama out of a glass of milk. A career-making performance, an all-time villain, and some of Tarantino’s finest, most twisted work. —Mahoney

Best quote: “Ooooooooh! That’s a BINGO!”

Miramax

2. The Bride, Kill Bill

Played by: Uma Thurman

She’s a bitch, she’s a lover, she’s a stone-cold assassin, she’s a mother! She wiggles her big toe and bloodies her knuckles; she slices through a rival’s noggin like it’s the bulb of an onion. Before we ever learn the name of Uma Thurman’s revenge-bound, iconically icy-hot murderess in Kill Bill: Vols. I and II, we know her mainly as “The Bride,” a pregnant gal shot in the head during a massacre at her wedding rehearsal who wakes up in a hospital years later, hell-bent on getting even. And we also learn that she’s even better known as “Black Mamba,” a code name from back in her elite “Deadly Viper Assassination Squad” days. (Yes, that’s where Kobe got it from.)

Whoever she is, though, wherever she comes from, The Bride’s retributive rampage is at once sprawling and precise, taking her from a squeaky-clean suburban kitchen to a swordsmith’s sushi counter; from a snowy Tokyo garden to a coffin 6 feet under. (It’s from that last spot that The Bride busts out while the audience finally learns her name, effectively resurrecting herself as Beatrix Kiddo from then on.) Thurman—who helped brainstorm the character with Tarantino while they were shooting Pulp Fiction, but who was no fan of the iconic yellow tracksuit—plays her role with lithe power and menacing grace, her eyes narrowing as she sizes up her enemies and widening into saucers when she learns that she has a surviving child after all. As the two-part film ends, Beatrix Kiddo has another new nickname—Mommy—and no names left uncrossed. It’s enough to make one’s heart explode. —Baker

Best quote: “You have every right to want to get even.” (Come on, QT: Pretty PLEASE bring the people Kill Bill: Vol III!!!!)

Miramax

1. Jules Winnfield, Pulp Fiction

Played by: Samuel L. Jackson

There was a moment, as preposterous as this might sound, when Samuel L. Jackson was in danger of losing out on the role of Jules Winnfield. Tarantino, who’d told Jackson he’d written the part for him, started toying with casting Paul Calderón. The brief fascination was killed when Jackson showed up for his final audition sipping a milkshake and eating a burger. “He was the guy you see in the movie,” producer Lawrence Bender told Vanity Fair in 2013. “He said, ‘Do you think you’re going to give this part to somebody else? I’m going to blow you motherfuckers away.’”

Thanks to Jackson’s performance, Jules always displays that kind of diamond-level clarity. OK, he’s a hitman. So I can’t quite call him the film’s moral center. But the character abides by a strict code, even as he’s executing the schlub who crossed his boss. Every single thing he says and does feels like a big shot of adrenaline to the audience’s brain, yes, even right down to the way he eats a burger. That’s why Jules rules. —Siegel

Best quote: “Well, there’s this passage I got memorized, sorta fits the occasion. Ezekiel 25:17: ‘The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.’”