Exploitation King Tarantino says he won't exploit child actors

Quemtin Tarantino (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, the High Priest of modern screen violelence, says that he refuses with work with child actors because he believes his work could traumatize them.

The controversial director, whose World War II epic Inglourious Basterds opens August 21, is known for his violent set pieces: Michael Madsen cutting off a cop's ear to the tune "Stuck in the Middle with You" in Reservoir Dogs, Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames in Maynard and Zed's torture dungeon in Pulp Fiction, Uma Thurman laying waste to a roomful of assassins in Kill Bill.

But in all of Tarantino's body of work, the only child actor that comes to mind is Chandler Lindlauer as "Young Butch" in Pulp Fiction, but all he had to do was watch "Clutch Cargo" and shake hands with Christopher Walken. Then again, that may have been mildly traumatic, but I digress.

While not someone known for his sensitivity, Tarantino maintains that he will never use a child actor in "harrowing" scenes, preferring to use animation.

QT uses the example of the anime sequence in the first Kill Bill movie, involving Lucy Liu's character's childhood trauma. "Kill Bill has the whole cartoon sequence of O-Ren witnessing her parents getting killed. It is very harrowing. I think it is a great piece," he says. "But there is a difference between doing something animated and taking a five or six year old girl, dropping blood under her face and saying, 'think about your mom being killed.' I wouldn't feel OK about doing that."

The director, usually a stranger to self-censorship, says, "I've never believed in limits, because an artist can do anything he likes. But when it comes to filming, I wouldn't take a real life child actor and stick them in some possibly psychologically harrowing experience."