Yahoo Sports Quentin Tarantino announces Leonardo DiCaprio's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood character Rick Dalton has 'passed away'
It's a sad day for fans of Bounty Law.
Quentin Tarantino announced Friday that Rick Dalton, the '60s actor played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the director's 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, has "passed away." The news was tweeted out by The Video Archives podcast, which is hosted by Tarantino and his Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary.
"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," read the tweet. "Rick passed away peacefully in his home in Hawaii and is survived by his wife Francesca. RIP Rick Dalton 1933-2023."
Francesca was played by Lorenza Izzo in the film.
Andrew Cooper/Columbia Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'
According to a subsequent tweet, next Tuesday's Video Archives podcast will be "a memorial episode designed by Quentin that features some of Rick's best roles."
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.
— The Video Archives Podcast (@VideoArchives) May 19, 2023
In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, DiCaprio's character is an actor who lives next door to Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. At the end of the film, he uses a flamethrower to incinerate a follower of Charles Manson played by Mikey Madison.
Although Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is set in 1969, Tarantino has mapped out Dalton's life and career far beyond the months covered in the film. In a 2021 interview with podcaster Jeff Goldsmith to publicize Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelization, the director revealed that he had written most of a book about Dalton's TV shows and movies.
"I wrote The Films of Rick Dalton book," he said. "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."
In the interview, Tarantino mentioned that Dalton reteamed with his stuntman Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, around a decade after the events depicted in the film for a vigilante movie called The Fireman. The pair co-wrote and produced the movie with Dalton directing and starring.
"The lead character was in the Vietnam War, he became a cop," noted the director. "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."
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