Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies are quite different from his other works. They’re action-packed and don’t focus as much on dialogue and genre blending. The main character, played by Uma Thurman, is out to kill a man named Bill, played by David Carradine.
He’s her former boss and lover, and the source of her pain. Carradine’s portrayal of Bill is amazing, even though his face isn’t shown until the second movie. It’s surprising to learn that Carradine almost didn’t get the role and wasn’t the first choice.
In a 2003 interview with BBC, Quentin Tarantino mentioned that he first thought of Warren Beatty for the role of Bill while he was writing the character. Even before the movie started being made, Beatty showed interest in playing the part.
Warren Beatty Was The First Choice
This was a big deal because Beatty doesn’t often take on acting roles. Despite having been in the acting scene since 1957, Beatty has only been in about two dozen movies.
Warren Beatty didn’t end up being part of Kill Bill because Quentin Tarantino was still writing the script when Beatty was interested. Tarantino realized that the character of Bill changed a lot as he wrote, especially for the second movie.
Initially, Bill was supposed to have less screen time and be less involved, like in Kill Bill Vol. 1. But as the story evolved, Bill became a bigger character, needing more depth and action. Tarantino explained this in his interview with BBC
“When I originally talked to Warren about it, I thought Bill really wouldn’t come into the movie until the end, almost like Brando in ‘Apocalypse Now’. But he wouldn’t stay put. You don’t see him, but you hear him three times in Volume 1, and he’s in Volume 2 from the first scene.
So it was the whole combination – the time commitment, the fact that he had to do all this martial arts training… It was just a bigger deal than I had led Warren to believe. We decided this movie shouldn’t be our first marriage [laughs].”
If Warren Beatty had stayed in the role, it would have been his first movie in two years after Town & Country in 2001. But since he walked away from the part, Beatty took a long break from acting in movies.
He didn’t appear on screen again until 2016 in the film Rules Don’t Apply. However, Beatty is still active in the entertainment industry and is involved in various filmmaking organizations.
Bruce Willis Was Considered Instead
Quentin Tarantino said that after Warren Beatty couldn’t do the role, he started thinking of David Carradine for it. But he also briefly considered Bruce Willis, who he’d worked with before in Pulp Fiction. Tarantino mentioned this in a 2019 interview.
He originally wrote the character with Warren Beatty in mind, but later adjusted it for David Carradine. If neither Beatty nor Carradine could do it, then Bruce Willis would’ve been the next choice.
In the interview, Tarantino said Bruce Willis would’ve been a great fit for the role, needing minimal changes to the script. He imagined Willis as a kind of evil James Bond character. Tarantino thinks that Willis’ personality could have suited the role well.
Having Warren Beatty, Bruce Willis, and David Carradine as potential choices for the character shows how impressive the lineup of actors was for the role, which eventually became iconic.