Quentin Tarantino was born on March 27th, 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father is Tony Tarantino, who was an actor, as well as an amateur musician. His mother was Connie McHugh, worked as an executive in the medical insurance business. Tarantino's parents separated before his birth, and he never met his biological father. His mother married Quentin's eventual stepfather, Curt Zastoupil, who was a musician, in 1965. Living with his mother and stepfather, the family moved to El Segundo, which is in the South Bay area of Los Angeles in 1971. Quentin's parents would file for divorce in 1973 (Tarantino & Peary, 2013).
Movies and acting was always the most important thing in Quentin Tarantino's life. He spent the majority of his time watching television, and was fortunate enough to attend several movies in the theatre. Once he was old enough to attend the theatre without an adult, he would be there every weekend, and if he had seen everything that was playing, he would stay to watch a repeat (Clarkson, 1995). His parents would often beg him to get off the couch and do something physical. The fact of the matter was that Tarantino only had two interests as a child, and they were movies and comic books. His taste in movies was exploitation films, as well as crime and horror movies (Tarantino & Peary). During an interview, Tarantino credited Jean-Luc Godard and Brian De Palma as his biggest role models, and even refers to them as his first director heroes (Tarantino & Peary, 2013). .
Tarantino had never done well in school because he simply was not interested in what was taught. He would drop out of school in the ninth grade, but not yet tell his mother of the decision. Page (2005) explains how the boy would hide in the house until she left for work, and have the entire day to watch television and read comic books (p.12-13). When he was Sixteen, he enrolled in acting classes, and was also working as an usher at porno cinemas.