Quentin Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter and film producer who has directed ten films. He first began his career in the 1980s by directing and writing Love Birds In Bondage and writing, directing and starring in the black-and-white My Best Friend's Birthday, a partially lostamateurshort film which was never officially released. He impersonated musician Elvis Presley in a small role in the sitcom The Golden Girls (1988), and briefly appeared in Eddie Presley (1992). As an independent filmmaker, he directed, wrote, and appeared in the violent crime thriller Reservoir Dogs (1992), which tells the story of six strangers brought together for a jewelry heist. Proving to be Tarantino's breakthrough film, it was named the greatest independent film of all time by Empire. Tarantino's screenplay for Tony Scott's True Romance (1993) was nominated for a Saturn Award. Also in 1993, he served as an executive producer for Killing Zoe and wrote two other films.
In 1994, Tarantino wrote and directed the neo-noirblack comedyPulp Fiction, a major critical and commercial success. Cited in the media as a defining film of modern Hollywood, the film earned Tarantino an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and a Best Director nomination. The following year, Tarantino directed The Man from Hollywood, one of the four segments of the anthology film Four Rooms, and an episode of ER, entitled "Motherhood". He wrote Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk till Dawn (1996)—one of the many collaborations between them—which attained cult status and spawned several sequels, in which they served as executive producers. Tarantino's next directorial ventures Jackie Brown (1997) and Kill Bill (2003–2004) were met with critical acclaim. The latter, a two-part martial arts film (Volume 1 and Volume 2), follows a former assassin seeking revenge on her ex-colleagues who attempted to kill her.