30 greatest Tarantino characters 12. Jackie Brown

Played by: Pam Grier in Jackie Brown

Jackie Brown is introduced, in the words of an abusive federal agent, as “a 44-year-old black woman desperately clinging on to this one sh**y little job [she] was fortunate enough to get”. A flight attendant and part-time drug courier, Jackie’s journey over the course of her film is among Tarantino’s most invigorating. She finds the excitement sorely missing in her life, meets a man who respects her rather than uses her, and regularly outsmarts everyone else in the room. It’s often of the fake-it-till-you-make-it variety, like in the nervous test runs of swiftly yanking a pistol out of her desk drawer in advance of the arrival of a man likely to kill her. But it makes her Tarantino’s most human hero, nowhere near as showy as The Bride or Major Marquis Warren, but arguably all the better for it.

Miramax Films