Jennifer Lawrence almost played Squeaky in Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino has revealed.
The filmmaker opened up on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, explaining how the role which eventually went to Dakota Fanning was initially offered to Lawrence.
“Early on, in the pre-production of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, I flirted around with the idea of – and [by the way], I couldn’t be happier with what Dakota Fanning did, it’s one of the best performances in the movie. She’s amazing as Squeaky Fromme. She becomes [her]. But early on, I investigated the idea of Jennifer Lawrence playing Squeaky,” the filmmaker told Maron.
“She came down to the house to read the script cause I wasn’t letting it out. So, she came down to the house and I gave her the script and said, ‘Go in my living room or go outside by the pool and read it.’”
He continued: “So she read it, and afterward, we talked about it a little bit. She was interested in doing it, but something didn’t work out. But she’s a very nice person, and I respect her as an actress.”
In the same interview, Quentin Tarantino revealed he would work under a different name if he could start his career over.
The filmmaker explained that his birth father’s name was Tarantino, but he grew up under his stepfather’s name, Zastoupil.
“I didn’t even know about the name Tarantino really at that time. I was Zastoupil,” he said. “That was my name. I was always known by that. That’s how I learned to write.
“I never knew [my father] at all. So when I took the name Tarantino around 18 or 19, it was simply because it sounded cool, it was Italian. Quentin Tarantino sounded like a cool name. It had nothing to do with him. It had nothing to do with the family.”
He added: “It also had the benefit of reinvention, because I had never used it.”
