Paul Dano thanked friends and colleagues on Wednesday for coming to his defense after director Quentin Tarantino called him the worst actor in Hollywood.
Since Tarantino, seemingly out of the blue, called him the “weakest f-----g actor” in the Screen Actors Guild eight weeks ago during a podcast, a host of actors and directors have rallied around Dano.
“That was really nice,” Dano told Variety at the Sundance Film Festival. “I was also incredibly grateful that the world spoke up for me so I didn’t have to.”
Dano, 41, was at a 20th-anniversary screening of “Little Miss Sunshine,” and his co-star Toni Collette made clear she believed Tarantino was way out of line.
“Are we really going there? F--- that guy!” Collette, 53, said of Tarantino. “He must’ve been high. … It was just confusing. Who does that?”
Several Hollywood A-listers including Reese Witherspoon, Ben Stiller and Simu Liu have also defended Dano.
“Paul Dano is an incredibly gifted, versatile actor,” said Witherspoon, who appeared with Dano in “Inherent Vice.” “More importantly, he is a gentleman.”
Stiller, who directed Dano in “Escape at Dannemora,” also dropped a partial F-bomb in defense of the actor while Liu called him an “incredible actor.”
Tarantino was chatting about the 2007 movie “There Will Be Blood,” which co-stars Dano, on an episode of “The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast” in December when he went on the tirade.
“He’s just such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy,” the Oscar-winning “Pulp Fiction” writer and director raged. “Daniel Day-Lewis shows that he doesn’t need a strong foil. The movie needs it. He doesn’t need anything. It’s supposed to be a two-hander and it’s not! … You put him with the the weakest f-----g actor in SAG?”
