As Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof roars onto DVD, Blockbuster.co.uk's Marshall Julius examines the cult director.

There's not a single aspect of Quentin Tarantino's life that doesn't revolve around movies. An obsessive, lifelong fan of the cinema whose tastes run from the foreign to the forgotten, he's either watching films, endlessly analysing and talking about them, or else making his own. Even romantically, he's mostly linked with actresses, Planet Terror's Rose McGowan being his latest squeeze. Though controversial for the violence in his films and his outspoken views on world cinema - once branding modern Italian films depressing and stating that greedy British actors were responsible for the ailing British film industry - Tarantino leads a relatively clean and scandal free existence, simply looking to have as much fun as possible, doing what he loves best.

Born on March 27, 1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee, Quentin Jerome Tarantino was the eldest of four, the son of Italian-American actor and musician Anthony "Tony" Tarantino, and Connie McHugh, of Irish and Cherokee Indian decent, who had little Quentin when she was just 16. Named after Burt Reynolds' character Quint Asper from long-running western show Gunsmoke, Quentin's obsession with cinema grew until, at the age of 16, he dropped out of High School to pursue his passion. Eschewing film school he opted instead for a cushy job in a video store, filling his days watching everything in the shop and his nights applying his boundless enthusiasm and 160 IQ to writing screenplays. "When people ask me if I went to film school," says Tarantino, "I tell them, 'no, I went to films.'"

By his mid-twenties, after writing, directing and starring in amateur 1987 effort My Best Friend's Birthday, only half of which survives today, Quentin was ready for the real thing. "If you want to make a movie," he reasoned, "make it. Don't wait for a grant, don't wait for the perfect circumstances, just make it." In January '92, Tarantino, 29, took a little movie he'd written and directed to the Sundance Film Festival. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, Reservoir Dogs was a clear winner with the public and the critics alike, championed in Europe and for years now regarded as a genre defining crime thriller.

Two years later Tarantino returned with Pulp Fiction, which premiered at the Cannes film festival and won the coveted Palme D'Or, later winning for its moon-faced director his only Oscar to date, for Best Original Screenplay. Then came Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) and now Death Proof (2007), originally half of double-feature Grindhouse, now standing alone and extended for your viewing pleasure and available to add to your list.

Violence has always played a big part in Tarantino's films. The bloodier and more shocking the better. Though his fans have never had a problem with it, the media has often been quick to criticise. "Sure, Kill Bill's a violent movie," said the director in 2003. "But it's a Tarantino movie. You don't go to see Metallica and ask the f*****s to turn the music down. And what if a kid goes to school after seeing Kill Bill and starts slicing up other kids? You know, I'll take that chance! Violent films don't turn children into violent people. They may turn them into violent filmmakers but that's another matter altogether. Actually, if I've made it easier for artists to work in violence, great! I've accomplished something."

Besides the violent content, Tarantino's wealth of trademarks include frequent cameo appearances, constant references to cult films and tv shows, Mexican standoffs, long, unbroken takes, extended close-ups of one person's face while someone else speaks off-screen and characters with aliases like Mr White and Mr Blonde from Reservoir Dogs, Honey Bunny and Pumpkin from Pulp Fiction and from Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Black Mamba, Copperhead, Cottonmouth and California Mountain Snake. Frequently working with the same stable of actors, among them Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Samuel L. Jackson and "muse" Uma Thurman, Tarantino is also well knows for giving comebacks to largely forgotten actors like John Travolta with Pulp Fiction, Pam Grier and Robert Forster with Jackie Brown and David Caradine with Kill Bill: Vol. 2.

A writer, director, producer, cinematographer, actor and card-carrying fanboy, Quentin's favourite movies include The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Rio Bravo (1959), Taxi Driver (1976), His Girl Friday (1940), Rolling Thunder (1977), They All Laughed (1981), The Great Escape (1963), Carrie (1976), Coffy (1973), Dazed and Confused (1993) and Hi Diddle Diddle (1943). Though he emulates directing heroes Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Sergio Leone and Jean-Luc Godard, and has himself enjoyed a fair bit of success over the past fifteen years, Tarantino maintains he hates the idea of being a professional film maker, because he regards it as a hobby, not a job. "I don't want to be a professional," he says. "I'm not in the Director's Guild. I don't want to be. I like holding on to my amateur status.

"My plan is to give you at least 15 more years of movies," says Quentin of his future, "but I'm not going to be this old guy who keeps cranking them out. My plan is to have a theater by that time in some small town and I'll be the manager - this crazy old movie guy."

By Marshall Julius, Blockbuster.co.uk

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