Quentin Tarantino Talks About His Alleged Foot Fetish: “That’s Just Good Direction”

Quentin Tarantino has long been linked to a fascination with feet in his movies, but the director says it’s more about storytelling than any personal preference.

Some of the most famous examples appear in Kill Bill. In the first film, Uma Thurman’s character, The Bride, is shown from the feet up as she struggles to regain control of her body.

In the sequel, her foot even plays a role in one of the movie’s violent moments. Pulp Fiction also has a scene where Jules and Vincent discuss a foot massage, along with several other moments involving feet throughout Tarantino’s films.

Speaking to GQ, Tarantino addressed the rumors about a foot fetish directly. “I don’t take it seriously,” he said. “There’s a lot of feet in a lot of good directors’ movies. That’s just good direction. Like, before me, the person foot fetishism was defined by was Luis Buñuel, another film director. And Hitchcock was accused of it and Sofia Coppola has been accused of it.”

One memorable example comes from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Margaret Qualley plays a Manson family member who rests her dirty feet on the dashboard of Cliff Booth’s car. At first, she was nervous about filming the scene.

She told IndieWire, “I genuinely was like, ‘Quentin, this is a bad idea. I don’t have good feet. I was in pointe shoes for far too long to have toes that can be shown to the world. We had a big debate about it, me, Quentin, and Brad, with them trying to be like, ‘You’re fine,’ and me being like, ‘No, guys, really, look, these are not good.’”

Qualley eventually performed the scene, and she said it helped her feel more confident about her feet. “I used to actually be pretty mortified with my feet,” she added. “Maybe I can finally just give up that now.”

Even Brad Pitt joked about Tarantino’s obsession during his 2020 Screen Actors Guild Awards acceptance speech. “I want to thank my costars, Leo, Margot Robbie, Margot Robbie’s feet, Margaret Qualley’s feet, Dakota Fanning’s feet,” he said. “Seriously, Quentin has separated more women from their shoes than the TSA.”

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