10 Movie Directors Who Dated Their Stars

2. Quentin Tarantino And Vanessa Ferlito (And Julie Dreyfus, And...)

Not that that's the only romance born out of Grindhouse, a mostly failed attempt to bring back some of the low-budget sleaze of seventies exploitation cinema. The other half of the project was helmed by Quentin Tarantino, who mostly misunderstood the genre with Death Proof, a film that was supposed to be about a crazy stuntman murdering ladies with his car but was mostly a bunch of actresses you sorta recognise sitting in a dive bar chatting nonsense for hours on end. With occasional appearances by Kurt Russell. One thing Tarantino did get right about his Grindhouse flick, however, was the gratuitous sexuality on show, directing a lap dance between Russell and actress Vanessa Ferlito that was "missing" from the film's original cut. Against all odds, forcing that young actress to grind up on the geriatric Snake Plissken apparently worked as a flirting technique, since just this week Tarantino was papped snogging Ferlito's face on the streets of LA. Not that it's the first time the director has been linked to one of his stars, as he was romantically involved with Julie Dreyfuss since she appeared as Lucy Liu's number two (who gets her arm sliced off) in Kill Bill Vol 1, casting her in a minor role as Goebbels'' French translator in Inglourious Basterds. There have been consistent rumours about the nature of his and Uma Thurman's relationship, too, probably not helped by the long, fetishistic takes of her feet during Kill Bill as well. Wiggle your big toe, oh yeah...