Where Is the Cast of ‘Pulp Fiction’ Now?
Put on your black bob wig, warm up for the Big Twist contest and, oh yeah, get ready to be under attack from hit men, evil antique shop owners and lovey-dovey, gun-toting maniacs: it’s the 30th anniversary of Pulp Fiction, which landed in theaters on Oct. 14, 1994.
The Academy Award-winning ensemble film from Quentin Tarantino wasn’t just a hit; it helped usher in a new era in Hollywood, one in which indie (or indie-esque) films could get wide release, unknown actors could score lead roles, and unconventional stories could draw huge crowds. Pulp Fiction certainly did; in its opening weekend, it took the No. 1 box office slot, beating a film by Sylvester Stallone, and went on to earn over $100 million.
So much of the film’s appeal came down to its vast, sprawling cast, which included everyone from then-unknown actors like Uma Thurman to actors who got a second act out of the film, like John Travolta. So where are they all now?
John Travolta
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After achieving fame in the ’70s as the star of first Welcome Back, Kotter and then Saturday Night Fever and Grease, Travolta was considered professionally past his prime when he turned up in Pulp Fiction as druggy gangster Vincent Vega. Director Tarantino had wanted actor Michael Madsen for the role, but he instead chose to appear in the film Wyatt Earp. The movie revitalized Travolta’s career, earning him a Best Actor Oscar nomination and leading to follow-up starring roles in Get Shorty, Broken Arrow and Face/Off.
Travolta has pared back his career since the 2020 death of his wife, Kelly Preston. He was most recently seen in the 2024 heist film Cash Out.
Samuel L. Jackson
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The role of Jules Winnfield, Vincent Vega’s Bible-misquoting partner, was originally written for Laurence Fishburne, who passed because he thought the movie glamorized drug use. Samuel L. Jackson ended up landing the role on his second audition. Jackson was already a character actor known for his collaborations with Spike Lee, but Pulp Fiction — which landed him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod — brought him to a whole new level, and Jackson became a leading man.
In the decades since, Jackson has become one of Hollywood’s most omnipresent faces, appearing in both the Star Wars and Marvel franchises, as Mace Windu and Nick Fury, respectively. His role in these franchises is probably part of why he holds the Guinness World Record for actor who has appeared in the most films that have earned over $100 million. In 2024 alone, he has starred in the animated Garfield movie, Argylle and The Piano Lesson, an adaptation of the August Wilson play of the same name.
Uma Thurman
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Uma Thurman was only 24 when Pulp Fiction was released; she had previously appeared in a handful of films like Dangerous Liaisons, mostly in smaller ingenue roles. The studio preferred Meg Ryan or Holly Hunter for the role, but Tarantino became dead-set on casting Thurman after her first audition.
Thurman’s Academy Award-nominated turn as Mia, the young trophy wife of gangster Marsellus Wallace, allowed her to jump to the A-list; in the late ’90s and early 2000s, she starred in rom-coms like The Truth About Cats and Dogs, thrillers like Gattaca, and Kill Bill, her two-part follow-up collaboration with Tarantino that earned her multiple Golden Globe nominations. In December 2024, she will star in Paul Schrader‘s Oh, Canada, alongside Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi.
Bruce Willis
FORTRESS, Bruce Willis, 2021. © Lionsgate / courtesy Everett Collection
Unlike much of the cast, Bruce Willis was an established star who was still considered to be in his prime; after coming to fame as the star of Moonlighting, he became a bona fide movie star with 1988’s Die Hard. But before Pulp Fiction, he had appeared in a number of underwhelming films, including 1990’s Hudson Hawk, which he also cowrote. His turn as prizefighter-on-the-run Butch revitalized his career and helped audiences see him as a talented actor, not just an action star — a reputation that would increase with his other ’90s hits like The Fifth Element and The Sixth Sense. Later on in the 2010s, Willis starred in a number of B-list action movies.
In 2023, Willis went public with a diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia, a degenerative disease that leads to difficulties with language and comprehension.
Ving Rhames
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The Juilliard-trained Ving Rhames had appeared on Broadway and small film roles before Pulp Fiction; after, he appeared in larger roles in blockbusters like Con Air and the Mission: Impossible films. He has most recently appeared as one of the voice actors in the animated film The Wild Robot and has been the voice of Arby’s TV ads since 2014.
Maria de Medeiros
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The Portuguese de Medeiros, who played Butch’s whimsical girlfriend Fabienne, has had a long career in the international film industry, appearing in Spanish-, French- and Portuguese-language films. Her most recent role was on the Brazilian soap opera Verdades Secretas, in 2021. Her most recent North American work was the 2015 experimental film The Forbidden Room, by avant-garde director Guy Maddin.
Tim Roth
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A star of Tarantino’s previous film, Reservoir Dogs, the role of diner robber “Pumpkin” was written especially for Tim Roth, though producers preferred Johnny Depp or Christian Slater (Tarantino also at one point considered him for Travolta’s role). After an early career in British art films like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Roth moved into more mainstream fare, like 1995’s Rob Roy, which earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, as well as 2001’s The Planet of the Apes and 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. Most recently, he appeared in the Dutch-German film Poison earlier this year.
Amanda Plummer
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Amanda Plummer gained her role of “Honey Bunny,” the profanity-shouting partner to Roth’s “Pumpkin,” directly through Roth himself — Roth introduced Tarantino to Plummer by saying, “I want to work with Amanda in one of your films but she has to have a really big gun.” The daughter of legendary actor Christopher Plummer, Amanda is known for her work in indie cinema and on Broadway, where she has received one Tony Award and two nominations. She has also won two Emmys, one for an appearance on The Outer Limits in 1995 and one for a guest role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2005. Most recently, she starred as villain Vadic on the show Star Trek: Picard in 2023.
Harvey Keitel
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Declared Tarantino’s “favorite actor since I was 16 years old,” Harvey Keitel played crime “cleaner” Winston Wolfe in a brief but absolutely scene-stealing appearance. One of the stars of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Keitel had a long career beginning in the 1960s, when he first collaborated with director Martin Scorsese — 1967’s Who’s That Knocking at My Door was both Scorsese’s first film as a director and Keitel’s first film as an actor. Keitel and Scorsese teamed up throughout the ’70s, in films like Mean Streets and Taxi Driver; he went on to work with directors including Ridley Scott, Brian De Palma, Wes Anderson and Francis Ford Coppola, who originally hired him as the lead actor in Apocalypse Now, but replaced him with Martin Sheen after a week. In the years immediately preceding Pulp Fiction, he starred in two art-house hits: 1992’s Bad Lieutenant and 1993’s The Piano. His most recent work was as the star of the 2024 series The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
Eric Stoltz
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Producers wanted Lance, the drug dealer who revives an overdosing Mia, to be played by Gary Oldman, who had played a slightly similar role in the Tarantino-written film True Romance. But Eric Stoltz — who had a career stretching back a decade, when he was the teen star of films like Mask and Some Kind of Wonderful — landed the small, improbably comedic role. In the years since, Stoltz has appeared in countless character roles in film and TV, and has developed a second career as a TV director. Since 2001, he’s directed episodes of Law & Order, Grey’s Anatomy and How to Get Away With Murder, and was one of the primary directors on Glee and Madam Secretary.
Rosanna Arquette
Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for The Women’s Media Center
Rosanna Arquette‘s appearance as Jody, Lance’s dazed wife, came almost a decade after she first came to prominence playing opposite Madonna in 1985’s Desperately Seeking Susan. The first of the four Arquette siblings (including Patricia, David and Alexis) to achieve Hollywood fame, Rosanna acted steadily in the years following Pulp Fiction, often in supporting roles. She was also one of the first people to speak publicly about the abuse and sexual harassment she suffered at the hands of producer Harvey Weinstein, who was one of the producers of Pulp Fiction. She often turns up in TV guest roles, most recently on the 2024 series Florida Man; her last regular series appearance was as Linda on Ray Donovan in 2014.
Christopher Walken
Prior to his small but very colorful cameo playing Butch’s father’s war buddy in a flashback, Christopher Walken was primarily known for more serious fare, like his role in the 1978 film The Deer Hunter, 1983’s The Dead Zone and the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill. Pulp Fiction helped showcase his deadpan comedic timing, as did his previous performance in the Tarantino-penned True Romance.
Walken’s career post-Pulp has included both comedic and serious turns, including his run of seven legendary hosting gigs on Saturday Night Live. He was most recently seen as Shaddam IV in the 2024 film Dune: Part Two.
Julia Sweeney
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SNL alum Julia Sweeney had a brief cameo as Raquel, “The Wolfe”‘s paramour and operator of a junkyard where a dead body is stored. Best known for her SNL character Pat, Sweeney is also known for her one-woman show about her experiences surviving lymphoma, God Said Ha! The show later went to Broadway, the original recording was nominated for a Grammy, and it was released as a film in 1998, produced by Tarantino. In addition to writing and starring in two additional one-woman shows, Sweeney has frequently appeared on NPR, on the shows This American Life and Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me! Her most recent TV role was in a 2019 episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Quentin Tarantino
Writer-director Tarantino — who took home the only Academy Award the film actually won, for Best Original Screenplay — has spent the ensuing decades becoming one of the best-known auteurs in Hollywood. His most recent film was 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a meditation about fading moving stars and Hollywood’s cultural changes in the late ’60s, which marked his second collaboration with Brad Pitt. Tarantino also released a novelization of that film, and a book called Cinema Speculation in 2022. He has promised that his next film, The Movie Critic, would be his last as a director; that film fell apart in early 2024.
Where Are They Now?
May 2021
Catch up with the stars of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s!
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