Was Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ Character A Real Person?

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is a different sort of story from writer-director Quentin Tarantino with its overt use of real characters and situations from Tinseltown in the late 1960s. With this in mind, audiences leaving the film this weekend might be curious if Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt’s characters were real people from the end of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The answer, it happens, is a bit more complicated than that.

In truth, Rick Dalton and his stuntman Cliff Booth are fictional, as is “Bounty Law,” the Western TV series that brought them to prominence in the movie. However, Tarantino based each man on a number of real-life actors and industry professionals while developing the script for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” lending some real resonance to their stories.

For Dalton, Tarantino confirmed on the Pure Cinema podcast that the character is meant to represent the difficulties many leading men faced adapting to the changes in Hollywood at the end of the 1960s. Specifically, he cited inspiration from TV actors George Maharis, Edd Byrnes, Tab Hunter, and Fabian Forte, who all had major success in the 1950s entertainment business. Dalton’s career as a washed-out former Western star was borrowed from Ty Hardin, star of the series “Bronco” from 1958 to 1962.

The friendship and professional background of Dalton and Booth, meanwhile, pulls from the stories of two even more famous men. Many aspects of Booth are based on stuntman-turned-filmmaker Hal Needham, including his handyman background, his military service, and his stunt double work for a major star, Burt Reynolds, another inspiration for Dalton. Needham developed a reputation as one of the best stuntmen of the 60s and 70s and eventually transitioned to directing with the massive hit, “Smokey and the Bandit,” which made Reynolds into an overnight superstar. He would go on to direct other memorable films with his friend, including “Hooper,” “Stroker Ace,” and “The Cannonball Run.”

Tarantino had seemingly intended to pay homage to Dalton’s connection to Reynolds in multiple ways that didn’t end up panning out. Reynolds himself was supposed to play George Spahn in the film before he passed away in 2018. “Westworld” star James Marsden was also cast to play Reynolds, but his small role was ultimately cut from the film.