Quentin Tarantino announces that Rick Dalton from ‘Once Upon A Time in Hollywood’ is dead

Quentin Tarantino has announced that the fictional actor Rick Dalton, who starred in his 2019 movie ‘Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood’, has passed away at the age of 90.

The fictional actor was played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and is the star of the fictional Western series ‘Bounty Law’. In ‘Once Upon a Time’ his character lives beside Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and her husband Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha).

“We are saddened by the news of the passing of actor Rick Dalton, best known for his roles in the hit TV series ‘Bounty Law’ and ‘The Fireman’ trilogy,” tweeted The Video Archives Podcast where Tarantino shared the news.

“Rick passed away peacefully in his home in Hawaii and is survived by his wife Francesca. RIP Rick Dalton 1933-2023.”

They followed up by informing fans that “because of his passing, the episode for ‘Rollerball’ has been postponed. Instead, we will come back on Tuesday with a memorial episode designed by Quentin that features some of Rick’s best roles.”

Tarantino has written a book on the fictional actor

“I wrote ‘The Films of Rick Dalton’ book,” Tarantino said on the podcast.

“It’s written as if Rick is real. You know, they have The Films of Charles Bronson and The Films of Anthony Quinn, well, it’s done like that, with synopsis and then some critical quotes from the time, and the book goes through every one of Rick’s movies that he did, leading to the end of his career in 1988, I believe, and every one of his episodic television shows.”

At the end of ‘Once Upon a Time’, Dalton is in character as Jake Cahill from ‘Bounty Law’, doing a commercial for Red Apple cigarettes, a fictional cigarette brand seen throughout Tarantino’s movies, first appearing in ‘Pulp Fiction’.

Elsewhere on the podcast episode, Tarantino spoke of a fictional movie called ‘The Fireman’ starring Dalton and stuntman Cliff Booth, who was played by Brad Pitt in ‘Once Upon a Time’.

“The lead character was in the Vietnam War, he became a cop,” Tarantino explained.

“And then he starts seeing this whole group of bad apple cops that are killing these guys and just completely corrupt and they end up killing his partner, played by a very young Sam Jackson. Then Rick targets these bad cops, and he gets dressed up as the Fireman, and he has his flamethrower and he goes and he burns them all down.”