Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | December 3, 2025
On Brett Easton Ellis’s podcast, Quentin Tarantino ranked the ten best films of the century so far. At number five, Tarantino listed Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, a movie he loves … except for Paul Dano’s performance.
I don’t get it. Paul Dano has two Emmy nominations. He was terrific as the Riddler in The Batman. He was remarkable in Prisoners, as Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy, and in Swiss Army Man. He’s clearly sought after by well-regarded directors: PTA, Denis Villeneuve, Matt Reeves, Kelly Reichardt, and Bong Joon-ho.
But not Quentin Tarantino.
There Will Be Blood would stand a good chance at being #1 or #2 if it didn’t have a big, giant flaw in it … and the flaw is Paul Dano,” Tarantino said on the podcast. “Obviously, it’s supposed to be a two-hander, but it’s also drastically obvious that it’s not a two-hander. [Dano] is weak sauce, man. He is the weak sister. Austin Butler would have been wonderful in that role. He’s just such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy. The weakest f***ing actor in SAG.”
Paul Dano? Tarantino is clearly an outlier here, although I’m with him on Austin Butler. He’s a terrific actor. But he would not have been as well suited to There Will Be Blood.
“I’m not saying he’s giving a terrible performance. I’m saying he’s giving a non-entity performance.” Ouch.
Granted. Dano is not the only one on Tarantino’s hit list. “I don’t care for [Dano],” he later clarified. “I don’t care for him, I don’t care for Owen Wilson, and I don’t care for Matthew Lillard.”
The hell? Lillard and Wilson catching strays, too. What did they do to hurt you, Tarantino?
