Quentin Tarantino Returns to Acting After Years with Only What We Carry

According to CinemaDrame News Agency, Simon Pegg (Mission: Impossible), Sofia Boutella (The Mummy), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Melancholia), and Quentin Tarantino, the director of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, will star in the feature film Only What We Carry. This marks Tarantino’s first major acting role since 1996, when he appeared in Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn.

The secretive drama was filmed in Deauville, France, and is the latest project from Welsh writer-director Jamie Adams, known for films such as She Is Love. The cast also includes French actor Liam Hellmann (Ibiza) and American singer Lizzy McAlpine, who will make her feature film debut.

Set on the Normandy coast, the film is described as “a meditation on love, loss, and the quiet courage it takes to move forward.” Simon Pegg plays a schoolteacher named Julian Jones, while Sofia Boutella portrays Charlotte Levan, a woman returning to her hometown after many years to confront her past. Quentin Tarantino plays John Percy, Julian’s old friend whose sudden arrival reveals long-buried truths. Charlotte Gainsbourg stars as the sister, Hellmann as a restless artist torn between love and commitment, and McAlpine as a young dancer named Jacqueline.

Jamie Adams, known for his improvisational filmmaking style, said he had always dreamed of making a film in Normandy “in the spirit of Éric Rohmer,” and that this project finally fulfilled that dream.

Tarantino has made brief appearances in several of his own or others’ films, including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). The Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained director is currently seeking his tenth and final feature as a filmmaker. He previously announced plans to direct The Movie Critic, but later decided to move in a different direction.