• Paul Dano finally responded to Quentin Tarantino calling him “the weakest male actor in SAG.”
  • The Little Miss Sunshine star said, “I was also incredibly grateful that the world spoke up for me so I didn’t have to.”
  • Dano received widespread public support after Tarantino criticized his performance in There Will Be Blood on a podcast.

Paul Dano is finally breaking his silence after Quentin Tarantino criticized his performance in There Will Be Blood.

The Love and Mercy star spoke with Variety at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, ahead of a 20th anniversary screening of Little Miss Sunshine.

Dano told the outlet that he was touched by all of the public support he received after Tarantino’s comments on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast went viral in December.  

“That was really nice,” the Ruby Sparks star said. “I was also incredibly grateful that the world spoke up for me so I didn’t have to.”

Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Paul Dano, Toni Collette and Abigail Breslin in ‘Little Miss Sunshine’.

Eric Lee/Fox Searchlight

Dano’s Little Miss Sunshine costar Toni Collette also weighed in on the Tarantino discourse: “Are we really going there? F— that guy! He must’ve been high… It was just confusing. Who does that?”

The film’s directors, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, also shared their two cents. 

“I can only think that his rawness of his performance made Tarantino uncomfortable,” Dayton opined. “He couldn’t be easily filed.”

Faris added, “You know what was interesting was the people coming out to defend Paul. There was immediately… He is loved by so many. He is so smart.”

Paul Dano in ‘There Will Be Blood’.
Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount

Tarantino made headlines when he shared his scathing opinion of Dano’s performance as twins Eli Sunday and Paul Sunday in There Will Be Blood, which the filmmaker ranked as his fifth-favorite film of the 21st century.

“There Will Be Blood would stand a better chance to be in number 1 or number 2 if it didn’t have a big giant flaw in it, and the flaw is Paul Dano,” the Kill Bill director said, adding that he doesn’t think the actor could match Daniel Day-Lewis’ Oscar-winning performance. “Obviously, it’s supposed to be a two-hander, and it’s also so drastically obvious that it’s not a two-hander.”

Tarantino also called Dano “weak sauce” and “a weak sister” before claiming that “Austin Butler would have been wonderful in that role” despite the Elvis star being just 16 when the film was released.

“[Dano] just such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy,” Tarantino said, adding that he thinks Dano is “the weakest male actor in SAG” and “the limpest dick in the world.”

Dano wasn’t the only performer that Tarantino targeted in the podcast.

“I don’t care for Owen Wilson, and I don’t care for Matthew Lillard,” he said later in the show.

Numerous collaborators and admirers came to Dano’s defense, including The Batman filmmaker Matt Reeves, Escape at Dannemora director Ben Stiller, Alec Baldwin, Simu Liu, and Josh Gad.

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.

Lillard also received widespread well-wishes after Tarantino’s comments circulated and reflected on the controversy in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. 

“It was like living through your own wake,” the Scream star said of his colleagues’ public and private responses. “All those R.I.P. emails or tweets and Instagram posts and TikToks, all of the things we see after somebody passes are so sweet. And the reality is I just got to live through all of it firsthand — alive and kicking! I can’t imagine a more lovely reaction to what happened.”

Lillard added, “Nobody has to like me. Nobody has to like any actor out there, obviously. It’s personal preference. I am not everyone’s first choice, that is obvious, but to then have that kind of reaction was beautiful.”