Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of Chris Pine’s famous family.
The “Inglourious Basterds” director is fond of old Hollywood and has a soft spot for 1940s actress Anne Gwynne, who just happens to be Pine’s maternal grandmother.
With over 60 acting credits to her name, Gwynne appeared in a number of horror and western films, including “House Of Frankenstein”, “Black Friday” and “Ride ‘Em Cowboy” – she died in 2003 at age 84.
Pine was made aware of Tarantino’s love of his grandmother and her films after they met at a Vanity Fair Academy Awards party.
“I’ve been to the Academy Awards a couple of times and I always take my mom and we have a great old time and laugh a bunch and she holds all the Power Bars,” the “Star Trek” actor explains on the podcast “Things Are Going Great For Me” with J. Claude Deering. “He knows everything about my grandmother. He knows film names, co-stars, directors, production designers, just unbelievable. So [he and my mother] ended up talking for about 40 minutes and I went off and got another martini.”
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Tarantino is such a fan of Gwynne, he even included a nod to her in a scene in “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”. During the film characters are gathered around a TV, watching a movie featuring Gwynne, at the Spahn Ranch with Bruce Dern. It’s an added Easter Egg in the film that even Pine admits he missed while watching.
“I call my folks and ask them if they’d seen it,” Pine recalls. “They saw it, loved it, and my mom says, ‘You know, that scene at the ranch and there’s a TV on?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I vaguely kind of remember this.’ But she said, ‘On the television is one of my mother’s films.'”
Pine says he hasn’t yet spoken to Tarantino about the scene but says, “mother actually wrote me up an email that I was going to forward to him. Obviously, it’s so sweet of him and I’m assuming that was done on purpose. My mother was ecstatic, just over the moon.”
