Is Rick Dalton a real person? Quentin Tarantino announces the passing away of the iconic character

American director Quentin Tarantino announced the death of Rick Dalton, a fictional character played by actor Leonardo DiCaprio in 2019's Oscar-winning film Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. On May 20, the official Twitter handle of The Video Archives podcast, which is helmed by the 60-year-old personality and his co-writer on the 1994 film, Pulp Fiction, Roger Avary.

Remembering his fictional roles in the television series Bounty Law and The Fireman trilogy, the post read:

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

In the film, the role of Francesca was played by Lorenza Izzo.

The character played by DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood is an actor who is a neighbor to Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. At the end of the film, DiCaprio's Dalton uses a flamethrower to burn Mikey Madison's character, who is shown as a Charles Manson follower.

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Quentin Tarantino's podcast will pay a special tribute to Rick Dalton's character

In a follow-up tweet, The Video Archives podcast revealed that it will host a special "memorial episode designed by Quentin that features some of Rick Dalton's best roles."

In 2021, Quentin Tarantino spoke about Rick Dalton's life while speaking to podcaster Jeff Goldsmith, revealing he had a biography set in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood.

“I wrote The Films of Rick Dalton book. 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.”

He also spoke about a fabricated film The Fireman, which featured both Rick Dalton and his stuntman Cliff Booth, the character which was played by Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. The fictitious film was based on a decade after the 2019's film.

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

Helmed and written by Tarantino, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood revolves around Dalton and his stuntman Booth, who tries to gain popularity and success in the ending years of Hollywood's Golden Age in 1969.

Aside from DiCaprio and Pitt, the film also stars Margot Robbie, Rafal Zawierucha, Al Pacino, Damian Lewis, Timothy Olyphant, Margaret Qualley, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Luke Perry, etc.