Everyone has a story of finding an awkward or surprising photo of a family member and a part of the family history they were unaware of. Maybe it’s embarrassing high school photos of your parents, or a surprising and secret career you didn’t know your grandparent had. When it comes to Chris Pine (hands down the best Chris), he recently discovered his grandmother is in Quentin Tarantino‘s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
Earlier this year, Tarantino appeared on The Ringer’s “Rewatchables” podcast and talked about Chris Pine being “hands down my favorite” actor of his generation. Turns out, Tarantino’s admiration for Pine extends to his family tree, more specifically his grandmother, Anne Gwynne. Pine’s grandmother is known as one of the first scream queens, having starred in numerous horror films throughout the ’40s like “Black Friday” and “House of Frankenstein,” as well as Westerns like “Men of Texas” and “Ride ‘Em Cowboy.“
This week, it was Chris Pine’s turn to appear in a podcast and talk about Tarantino. Appearing in the first episode of J. Claude Deering‘s “Things Are Going Great For Me” podcast, Pine talked about meeting Tarantino one year at the Vanity Fair Oscars after-party, where he introduced the director to his mother, who Pine “always” takes with him. “[Tarantino] knows everything about my grandmother,” the actor said. “He knows film names, co-stars, directors, production designers, just unbelievable. So [he and my mother] ended up talking for about 40 minutes and I went off and got another martini.”
Years later, Tarantino’s admiration for Gwynne found its way to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” As Pine tells it, “I call my folks and ask them if they’d seen it. They saw it, loved it, and my mom says, ‘You know, that scene at the ranch [with Bruce Dern] and there’s a TV on?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I vaguely kind of remember this.’ But she said, ‘On the television is one of my mother’s films.’ So, I have yet to get in touch with him, and my mother actually wrote me up an email that I was going to forward to him. Obviously, it’s so sweet of him and I’m assuming that was done on purpose. … My mother was ecstatic, just over the moon.”