A guide to Quentin Tarantino’s many ‘Pulp’ players

Thirty years ago this week, no one was spouting Bible verses any better than Samuel L. Jackson.
The now-iconic actor scored an Oscar nomination for playing violent but thoughtful – and undisputedly cool – hitman Jules Winnfield in “Pulp Fiction,” Quentin Tarantino’s genre-mashing, game-changing indie masterpiece that put the director and Jackson on the pop-culture map. Since then, Jackson’s appeared in several other Tarantino outings. And Tarantino, starting with his 1992 debut “Reservoir Dogs,” has built an impressive repertory company that’s as much a hallmark of his oeuvre as antiheroes and funky soundtracks. (The person who’s been in more Tarantino films than anyone? The director himself, sometimes in supporting roles and other times just in voiceover.)
To celebrate 30 years of “Pulp Fiction” (released Oct. 14, 1994), here’s a Venn diagram showing Tarantino films’ recurring star power through the decades that could only be described as Kool and the Gang.
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Paired with John Travolta, Jackson had his big Hollywood breakout in “Pulp Fiction” before popping up three years later as a gun runner opposite Pam Grier in the crime comedy/blaxploitation homage “Jackie Brown.” And in the ’90s, three of Jackson’s high-profile “Pulp” co-stars starred in Tarantino’s earlier “Reservoir Dogs”: Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi went from playing gangsters Mr. Orange, Mr. White and Mr. Pink, respectively, to populating “Fiction” as diner robber Pumpkin, no-nonsense fixer Winston Wolfe and a Jack Rabbit Slim’s waiter, Buddy Holly.
In the 2000s, Jackson had small roles as wedding pianist Rufus in the second volume of the martial arts revenge epic “Kill Bill,” which starred his “Pulp Fiction” co-star Uma Thurman, and as a narrator in the World War II fantasy thriller “Inglourious Basterds.” (Both also included ’70s and ’80s action star Bo Svenson and French actress Julie Dreyfus.) “Basterds” featured Eli Roth, the director of “Hostel” and the recent “Borderlands,” as a Nazi-hunting soldier opposite Brad Pitt and in his buddy Tarantino’s female-fronted action horror “Death Proof” as a dorky bar patron who makes fun of Kurt Russell’s villain.
Tarantino was in his Western era in the 2010s with pre-Civil War revenge thriller “Django Unchained” – which offered a good-guy role for “Basterds” baddie Christoph Waltz – and twisty locked-room mystery “The Hateful Eight.” (Jackson scored parts in both, as an enslaved henchman in “Django” and the lead bounty hunter of “Eight.”) After playing the evil plantation owner of “Django,” Leonardo DiCaprio played an old-school action-movie star opposite “Basterds” man Brad Pitt in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” an LA story based on the Manson family murder of Sharon Tate. But the real MVPs of that decade were film legend Bruce Dern and New Zealand actress/stuntwoman Zoe Bell, who appeared in all three movies – as did, you guessed it, Tarantino.
Read more: As ‘Pulp Fiction’ turns 30, we rank all Quentin Tarantino movies
Contributing: David Baratz
SOURCES: USA TODAY research, IMDB
PHOTOS by Getty Images; USA TODAY Network; Reuters; Miramax of Courtesy Everett Collection