Mikey Madison Says Doors ‘Cracked Open’ for Her After “Once Upon a Time”: ‘I Really Credit Quentin Tarantino’

NEED TO KNOW

• Mikey Madison said doors in the movie industry “cracked open” for her after she made Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood in a new book on the making of the movie

• “You know, it was ‘Well, if she has worked with Quentin, there must be something about her,’ ” Madison said

• Jay Glennie’s The Making of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is available for purchase now

Six years removed from Quentin Tarantino‘s 2019 hit Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, young actors like Mikey Madison are recounting how the film changed their lives.

In author Jay Glennie’s The Making of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, available now, Academy Award winner Madison, 26, looks back on the host of up-and-coming talent Tarantino, 62, and casting director Victoria Thomas assembled to round out the movie’s cast, “which gave us all an uplift in our careers,” she said.

“I really credit Quentin and his trust, which meant other directors and other people see something different in me,” Madison said in the book. “Doors that had been kind of shut to me were, I think, cracked open after working on Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.”

Aside from the movie’s stars Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie, Tarantino cast young actors like Madison, Austin Butler, Sydney Sweeney, Margaret Qualley and Maya Hawke to play members of the Charles Manson “family,” whom Pitt and DiCaprio’s characters encounter in the movie’s climactic violent sequence.

Butler, Hawke and Madison shared the screen as their characters approach the homes of their would-be victims before Tarantino’s movie rewrites history with the Manson cult members’ deaths. “Oh, you just knew that Austin was going to be a huge star,” Hawke, 27, said of working with Butler on those scenes.

When Madison spoke about the movie’s long-term impact on her career, she added, “You know, it was ‘Well, if she has worked with Quentin, there must be something about her.’ All these years later, I got to work with Sean Baker, who originally saw me in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood and essentially cast me and wrote the part for me in Anora, so I’m forever grateful to Quentin.”

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In the six years since Tarantino released his most recent movie, Madison has won an Oscar, and Butler has received an Academy Award nomination. Sweeney now has two Emmy Award nominations. All three are among Hollywood’s most in-demand actors, with Butler having played Dune: Part Two’s memorable villain and Sweeney’s 2023 hit rom-com Anyone But You.

The Making of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is available for purchase now.

Read the original article on People