Quentin Tarantino's Alleged Obsession With Feet, Explained

Is Quentin Tarantino obsessed with feet? Maybe — but nobody can deny how often they show up in his films.

Ever since Tarantino launched his career as a director with "Reservoir Dogs" in 1992, audiences have noticed something incredibly specific: his movies often include lingering, close-up shots of people's bare feet (women's bare feet, to be even more specific). Tarantino is wildly unsubtle about it, too — so it makes sense that, after all this time, people are curious as to whether or not he's truly consumed by thoughts of bare feet at all times.

For his part, Tarantino hasn't really put the issue to bed. In an interview with GQ in September 2021, John Phipps inquired about a potential "foot fetish" as it pertains to Tarantino's filmography, and the director brushed it off by mentioning other famous filmmakers. "I don't take it seriously," Tarantino said, before conspicuously pointing out the presence of feet in a bunch of other movies. "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."

Yes. Feet show up constantly in Quentin Tarantino movies. After "Reservoir Dogs," the director made an even bigger splash with "Pulp Fiction," his non-linear Oscar nominee that follows hitmen Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnifield (Samuel L. Jackson) around as they end up in variously weird, gross, and gory situations. Uma Thurman's character, Mia Wallace, spends most of her time on-screen completely barefoot. In "Jackie Brown," Jane Fonda's character Melanie Ralston wears jewelry on her feet, drawing the camera there. In both "Kill Bill" films, Thurman reappears as The Bride (also known as Beatrix Kiddo), a former assassin who emerges from a coma and decimates everyone who wronged her. For a trained assassin, she spends a weird amount of time shoeless.

"Inglourious Basterds" features a close-up of a perverse Cinderella moment where actress Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) reveals her status as a double agent to Nazi Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) by trying on a shoe. "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" lets most of its female characters, from Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) to young hippie "Pussycat" (Margaret Qualley), shed their shoes whenever they please. This is, by no means, an exhaustive list of all the times bare female feet are put on display in Tarantino movies. So what do the director's stars have to say about this?

Even Quentin Tarantino's leading ladies (and men) have made jokes about the director's apparent foot fetish — or shared stories about what it's like to work with him and go shoeless on screen. While appearing on the Jonathan Ross Show in 2003 to discuss "Kill Bill," Uma Thurman fretted, "In this movie, it's a lot of foot. That's very embarrassing," before bemoaning that she hates one of her toes and how large it is. 

As for Margot Robbie, she shared an ... interesting story about arriving on set to play doomed actress Sharon Tate with dirty feet, only for Tarantino to insist they stay that way for a close-up shot (in the film, Sharon goes to see one of her own films, takes off her shoes in the theater, and props them up on the seat in front of her, which it should be said is gross and something nobody should ever do in a public movie theater). In a Life in Looks video for Vogue in 2023 while promoting Barbie, Robbie explained why her character was barefoot before recalling, "But my feet were dirty because I'd been walking around set. They stayed dirty in the movie because Quentin said, 'Don't. Don't clean them.' "Someone ran in to do it, and he was like, 'No, it's real. Keep it.'"

Meanwhile, in his 2020 SAG Awards acceptance speech — after winning an award for playing driver Cliff Booth in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" — Brad Pitt thanked some very special costars, shouting out "Margot Robbie, Margot Robbie's feet, Margaret Qualley's feet, Dakota Fanning's feet" before joking, "Seriously, Quentin has separated more women from their shoes than the TSA." At least it sounds like the actors are comfortable enough to make jokes about it, at the end of the day.