information, so I became semi-famous … I became unlisted after that! It’s acting for a reason. The last person in the world you’d think would play the Gimp! But about two dozen guys who went to the trouble of calling L.A. “Do you do that kind of stuff in real life?” And I can safely say I didn’t go out for a cup of coffee, and I don’t do that stuff in real life, so I avoided meeting any of those fellows. Jackson Can Still Recite His Biblical Pulp Fiction Speech So the first weekend it opened, I remember coming home on a Monday or Tuesday night and seeing 22 messages on my answering machine, and going, “What the …?” One was from my mom, and 21 of them were really creepy guys asking me out, at the very least, for a cup of coffee.

I didn’t need to - I already had some 20-odd dates lined up, if I had bothered! There were people who bothered to sit through the credits way back in the day, to see who played the Gimp - and this was, of course, before you could Google someone, and this was back in the day when we all had landlines, and I was listed. So Phil went up to him and said, “Hey, man! I was in Pulp Fiction, too! How’s it going?” And the guy immediately was like, “Uh ….” and just backtracked away, and ran away, basically. Phil LaMarr, who’s in the film as well - he’s the young man who gets his head blown off in the back of the car - he was at a party, this was a number of years ago, and he overheard this guy hitting on a gal, claiming to have played the Gimp in Pulp Fiction! It just seems like one of the worst ways - or maybe one of the best, depending on your predilection! - to try and pick someone up. My favorite thing is, people have claimed to be the Gimp, and have been called out for it. They may have put some powder around, but they didn’t use any makeup to make my eyes pop, as far as I know. If you know me! And everyone who does know me says, “Oh, it’s so obviously Steve Hibbert,” because you see my eyes very plainly.

But there’s no correlation to me booking other work subsequently from it.ĭoes anyone ever recognize you as the Gimp? Because most people, if they play a memorable role, it kind of leads to other things. And I also kind of love the fact that there’s nothing I can do about it. And whatever else I’ve done before or will do in show business, I don’t think I’ll ever have a cooler credit than that. I’ve never sent out Christmas cards with the Gimp or anything. I wish I had, but I’ve never figured out a way to monetize it or make it a thing. You played a hugely memorable character but likely still have anonymity. We bring out the Gimp after we bring out this clip of the Gimp’s big scene. In this lengthy interview, Hibbert, a onetime member of the Groundlings improv group who was married to Saturday Night Live’s Julia Sweeney circa Pulp Fiction and co-wrote her spinoff film, It’s Pat, discusses the three days he spent in the Gimp suit. To get answers to these and other burning Gimp-related questions, we looked around for the actor who played him and received a call from the mystery man himself, Steve Hibbert, just in time for the 20th anniversary of Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece next Tuesday. Who is this masked man? Why is he helping these sadists? What on Earth was this guy thinking? In one of the strangest moments in Pulp Fiction, the two pawnshop rapists who have kidnapped boxer Butch Coolidge (played by Bruce Willis) and crime-lord Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) task a leather-clad bondage slave - “well, bring out the Gimp …” - with watching over Butch as they set about to violate Marsellus in a separate area of their basement dungeon that is also referred to, cryptically, as “Russell’s old room.” The Gimp didn’t make for much of a security guard, but the character certainly made an impression on Pulp Fiction fans, in part because of all the mystery surrounding him.

Ralphus gimp