Where The Pulp Fiction Cast Are Now (2024)

Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction came out 30 years ago, and its ensemble cast have gone on to have wildly different careers. After the modest success of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction heralded Tarantino's arrival as an important voice in independent film. It remains one of his most popular movies three decades later, and a lot of the movie's lasting appeal can be attributed to its superb cast.

Pulp Fiction has a mix of established stars like Bruce Willis and lesser-known names like Ving Rhames. While the movie's immense success gave each actor a big platform, they haven't all been as successful as Samuel L. Jackson. Pulp Fiction's non-linear story dips in and out of a few interconnected stories, which gives many actors at least some time to shine.

14 Samuel L. Jackson

Jules Winnfield

Pulp Fiction gave Samuel L. Jackson's career a massive boost. His starring role as the smart-mouthed assassin Jules Winnfield means that he hoovers up a large portion of Pulp Fiction's best quotes. He has since appeared in four other Quentin Tarantino movies, including his outstanding role in Django Unchained. His other most famous characters include the Jedi Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequels and Nick Fury in the MCU. He recently lent his voice to The Garfield Movie, but his greatest animated character is still Frozone from The Incredibles. Jackson is set to star alongside James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan in Unholy Trinity, an upcoming Western.

13 John Travolta

Vincent Vega

Pulp Fiction offered John Travolta a chance at a career revival. Before his performance as Vincent Vega, Travolta was most famous for his dancing feet in Grease and Saturday Night Fever. Pulp Fiction showed his comedic side, and he has since enjoyed a wide variety of acting roles. Travolta has appeared in musicals such as Hairspray, animated movies like Bolt and action thrillers like Face/Off. Still, it's been a few years since Travolta's last big hit, and he has starred in a few direct-to-video movies. He and Katherine Heigl are teaming up for That's Amore, an upcoming musical romcom. Away from acting, he is also a qualified pilot and a singer-songwriter with nine albums to his name.

12 Uma Thurman

Mia Wallace

Pulp Fiction's Mia Wallace is one of Quentin Tarantino's most enigmatic and alluring creations, and Uma Thurman was the perfect choice to play her. Thurman was so glamorous and popular that she has been credited with bringing Prada into the American mainstream after wearing one of their dresses to the Oscars when she was nominated for Pulp Fiction. Her role in Kill Bill produced one of the defining performances of Quentin Tarantino's career, and it arguably remains her most famous part. Her drama movie with Richard Gere, Oh, Canada, recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

11 Bruce Willis

Butch Coolidge

The unsung hero of Pulp Fiction is Bruce Willis, whose quiet performance as a principled boxer on the run from some unsavory people often gets overshadowed by the much louder and splashier trio of Jackson, Travolta and Thurman. Unlike some of his co-stars, Willis was already a huge star before Pulp Fiction thanks to the Die Hard franchise. His career went from strength to strength in the 1990s and 2000s with a string of well-received action and sci-fi movies, including Sin City, The Sixth Sense and 12 Monkeys. Willis starred in a remarkable number of direct-to-video movies in the last few years of his career, but he has since retired, and his family have announced that he has frontotemporal dementia.

10 Ving Rhames

Marsellus Wallace

Marsellus Wallace remains one of Ving Rhames' most memorable roles 30 years later. He has been working steadily in Hollywood ever since, but few of his movies have had the same impact as Pulp Fiction. The notable exception to this rule is obviously the Mission: Impossible franchise. His computer hacker Luther Stickell is the only character beside Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt who has appeared in every movie since Brian De Palma's 1996 original. He is set to return one last time for Mission: Impossible 8. He is also a part of the ensemble cast for DreamWorks' new animated sci-fi movie The Wild Robot.

9 Tim Roth

Ringo/ "Pumpkin"

Quentin Tarantino and Tim Roth have worked together many times. Roth was the beating heart of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino's stylish debut, and the British actor returned for Pulp Fiction. Over 20 years later, he teamed up with Tarantino once more for The Hateful Eight, which provided him with one of his greatest roles. He is also a part of the MCU, playing Emil Blonsky/ Abomination in two movies and the TV series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. His most famous TV role is that of Dr. Cal Lightman, a body language expert who uses his knowledge to fight crime in Lie to Me.

8 Christopher Walken

Captain Koons

Christopher Walken appears for just one beautiful and bizarre scene in Pulp Fiction, as a USAF general who gifts a young Butch his father's watch. Walken has enjoyed a long and successful career in multiple genres. Following his breakthrough in The Deer Hunter, Christopher Walken's best movies have ranged from comedies like Seven Psychopaths to crime dramas like True Romance. He recently stood out as the Emperor in Dune: Part Two, and he was a key part of the first season of Apple's sci-fi drama Severance.

7 Harvey Keitel

Winston Wolfe

Like Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel starred in Reservoir Dogs before Pulp Fiction. His association with Quentin Tarantino is strong, but he has also been a frequent collaborator with both Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson. He starred in many of Scorsese's early movies, including Taxi Driver, but his movies with Anderson show that he has a comedic side too. Scorsese and Anderson have given him two of his biggest movies of the past decade, The Irishman and Isle of Dogs respectively, although he has minor parts in both. He garnered praise for his performance in the 2024 TV drama The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

6 Amanda Plummer

Yolanda/ "Honey Bunny"

Amanda Plummer, daughter of The Sound of Music star Christopher Plummer, plays Honey Bunny, Ringo's partner in crime in Pulp Fiction. She had had a few film roles before Pulp Fiction, but she was also a successful stage actor, having won a Tony Award in 1982 for Agnes of God. Since Pulp Fiction, she has played supporting roles in movies as varied as Hercules and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, but she has had most of her success on TV. She won two Emmy Awards for guest roles on The Outer Limits and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit after Pulp Fiction. She most recently played the villain Captain Vadic in the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard.

5 Phil LaMarr

Marvin

Marvin only has a small role in the tangled web of Pulp Fiction, but his death in the back seat of Jules and Vincent's car provides one of the movie's funniest moments. A year after this role, Phil LaMarr joined the inaugural cast of the sketch comedy series Mad TV, where he stayed for five seasons. He has had plenty of live-action guest roles on TV shows, but he is most famous for his work as a voice actor. His biggest movies and TV shows include Samurai Jack, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Justice League. He will reprise his role as the Jamaican bureaucrat Hermes Conrad for Futurama season 12.

4 Maria De Medeiros

Fabienne

After playing Butch's girlfriend Fabienne in Pulp Fiction, Portuguese actor Maria de Medeiros went on to star in a mix of American and European movies in several different languages. She is also a director, with her most notable work being 2000's April Captains, which tells the story of Portugal's Carnation Revolution of 1974. She continues acting and directing to this day, with upcoming projects in Portuguese, French and German. Medeiros has also released four music albums, and she sings in just as many languages as she has acted in.

3 Eric Stoltz

Lance

Eric Stoltz was originally cast in Back to the Future, but his creative differences with Robert Zemeckis caused the director to replace him with Michael J. Fox. Despite this setback, Stoltz went on to appear in plenty of successful teen comedies throughout the 1980s. After his small role in Pulp Fiction, Stoltz continued to play supporting roles in plenty of Hollywood movies, including Jerry Maguire and Anaconda. He has also developed into a prolific TV director, with episodes of Glee, Madame Secretary and Bull under his belt.

2 Rosanna Arquette

Jody

Pam Grier and Ellen DeGeneres also auditioned for the part of Lance's wife Jody, but Quentin Tarantino chose Rosanna Arquette. Many of Arquette's biggest hits came before Pulp Fiction, and she scooped awards for Desperately Seeking Susan and Baby It's You. She has remained involved in independent films over the past 30 years, as well as appearing in more mainstream TV shows like The L Word and Netflix's Ratched. Arquette has also been an important advocate for women's rights, and she was among the high-profile actors who publicly accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct.

1 Quentin Tarantino

Jimmie

Similar to Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino gives himself a minor role in Pulp Fiction as Jimmie, Jules' friend who lets him and Vincent use his house while they clean up Marvin's murder. He has had cameos in most of his movies, although some are so minor that they could easily be missed, like his role as a member of the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill. Pulp Fiction propelled Tarantino to stardom, and he has cemented this legacy with a string of hits. Tarantino wants to direct just ten movies, meaning that he is preparing for his swansong. He recently pulled the plug on a project titled The Movie Critic with Brad Pitt, and he has gone back to the drawing board.

Pulp Fiction

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Quentin Tarantino's classic tale of violence and redemption follows the intertwining tales of three protagonists: hitman Vincent Vega, prizefighter Butch Coolidge, and Vincent's business partner Jules Winnfield.

Director

Quentin Tarantino

Release Date

October 14, 1994

Writers

Quentin Tarantino

Cast

John Travolta , Bruce Willis , Ving Rhames , Samuel L. Jackson , Uma Thurman , Christopher Walken , Tim Roth , Harvey Keitel , Eric Stoltz , Rosanna Arquette

Runtime

154 minutes