Quentin Tarantino has some very harsh words for his least favorite actor in Hollywood.
The famed director singled out Paul Dano, 41, while discussing the actor’s role in the 2007 Paul Thomas Anderson film, There Will Be Blood on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast.
The one “flaw” in the celebrated film, Tarantino said, was Dano, who stars as twins Eli and Paul Sunday opposite Daniel Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview. Day-Lewis won his second of three Oscars for the role. “It’s supposed to be a two-hander, and it’s not,” he argued, calling Dano’s performance “weak sauce.”
According to Tarantino, Austin Butler, who is seven years younger than Dano, “would have been wonderful in that role.” His apparent distaste for the actor goes beyond the one role as the conversation continued. “He’s just such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy,” he said before calling Dano “the weakest male actor in SAG” and “the limpest d--- in the world.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to a rep for Dano for comment.
Dano wasn’t the only one who caught a stray from the director, who also said, “I don’t care for Owen Wilson” and “I don’t care for Matthew Lillard.”
Tarantino’s tangent came as he was discussing his top 10 picks for the best movies of the 21st century. He named 2001’s Black Hawk Down as his top film, followed by Toy Story 3 (#2), Lost in Translation (#3), Dunkirk (#4), There Will Be Blood (#5), Zodiac (#6), Unstoppable (#7), Mad Max: Fury Road (#8), Shaun of the Dead (#9), and Midnight in Paris (#10). He told Ellis that There Will Be Blood “would stand a better chance to be in number one or number two if it didn’t have” Dano, which he called the film’s “big giant flaw.”
Despite his harsh criticism of the actor, Dano is a celebrated actor with several critically acclaimed performances under his belt. Though the Oscar-winning film There Will Be Blood was his career-defining role, he went on to make memorable turns in Little Miss Sunshine, Prisoners, 12 Years a Slave, The Fabelmans, The Batman, and more. He’s also regularly named as one of the “best” actors who has never been nominated for an Oscar.
