This past weekend saw the release of Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It may not be Tarantino’s final film, but it does kinda feel like his career has been building up to this one, as it fully encapsulates his love of film as a whole. While many could pick at the film’s absence of any real plot, it’s clear he has a real love of these characters, including the lead Rick Dalton.

Throughout the runtime of the movie, we witness the emotional highs and lows over the course of a few days that he goes through, and a lot of it is certainly in his own head. That’s not to say he has nothing to worry about, but as many of us do, he catastrophizes small things and builds them up in his head.

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While Leonardo DiCaprio’s take on the character does seem to be packed with insecurity, it never occurred to me that some of his insecurities were based in a mental disorder. In a recent Vanity Fair video, Tarantino stated that Dalton was partially based on actor Pete Duel, who tended to drink to combat his bipolar disorder, which went undiagnosed.

“Leo got that,” Tarantino said in the video. “Now, we already had Rick a drinker, but the whole thing about undiagnosed bipolar and not knowing how that works, and the weird pendulum swings of emotion you would have … that became a really interesting thing that we thought Rick could deal through. And that gave Leo a good, solid ground in which to work and build a character and have a subtext going on inside of scenes that doesn’t have to revolve around the story of the scene.”

I really enjoy that. As someone who takes the portrayal of mental illness in cinema seriously, I think it was great that it was never thrust at the forefront or made the center of attention in any way. At the end of the day, it was the story about an actor’s struggle with his career, and I think that came across well.

What do you think of this reveal? Did you notice these aspects? Let us know your thoughts down below!

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SOURCE: Vanity Fair