Stephen Hibbert, an actor with a background in comedy who became famous as the Gimp in “Pulp Fiction,” has died. Hibbert’s daughter Rosalind confirmed the news to Rolling Stone. The actor was 68 years old.
“Our father, Stephen Hibbert, passed away unexpectedly this week,” his children Ronnie, Rosalind and Greg reportedly told celebrity portal TMZ, which reported his death from a heart attack on Monday in Denver. “His life was filled with love and dedication to the arts and his family. He will be greatly missed by many.” Hibbert had described himself as “semi-retired” in recent years, but still appeared at fan conventions.
Hibbert played a major role in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” – even though the actor didn’t say a single word. In the film, mafia boss Marsellus Wallace encounters Bruce Willis’ boxer character Butch by chance on the street – after Butch ignores Wallace’s orders to intentionally lose a fight. Wallace follows Butch into a pawn shop, where the owner Maynard gains the upper hand: He pulls a shotgun on the two of them, leads them into the basement, ties them up and gags them – and rapes them together with his friend Zed.
The most famous scene
“Well, then get the gimp out,” says Zed, a security guard. “I think the gimp is sleeping,” Maynard replies. “Then you’ll have to go down and wake him up, won’t you?”
Wallace and Butch look on, confused and frightened, as Maynard retrieves the gimp – Hibbert in a full-body S&M leather outfit – from a basement. As Zed taps his fingers on the Gimp’s mask, choosing who to abuse first, the Gimp doesn’t say a word; they take Wallace into another room. Maynard tells the Gimp to “keep an eye on” Butch, to which the Gimp just giggles as the two listen to what’s going on next door. Eventually Butch frees himself and knocks the gimp out – effectively hanging him since he was tied up.
“I played the scene as if the guys holding him captive had cut out his tongue,” Hibbert told AARP in 2024. “Quentin really liked the idea. The Gimp had been their prisoner for a while. So he was resigned to it – there was a kind of Stockholm Syndrome going on with the Gimp.”
Tarantino’s backstory to the Gimp
Tarantino explained the Gimp’s backstory in a fan Q&A for Empire magazine in 2019. “It doesn’t quite come across that way in the movie, but in my head when I wrote it, the Gimp is dead,” said the filmmaker and screenwriter. “Butch knocked him out, and when he passed out, he hung himself. As for the backstory, he was some kind of hitchhiker or someone they picked up seven years ago, and they trained him to be the perfect victim.”
“If a setup took a long time, remember [Willis] “Everyone remembered that there was a guy – me – dressed head to toe in leather, and it was pretty hot on set,” Hibbert told AARP. “I thought it was a little macabre, but all these great actors had already been cast and I knew Quentin would direct the scene perfectly. Plus, I was hidden under all the leather and studs, so if it was really frightening – and some would say it is – I could remain anonymous.”
Hibbert and the Groundlings
Hibbert’s acting roots lie with the famous improvisation troupe The Groundlings in LA. He came into Tarantino’s environment through “Saturday Night Live” actress Julia Sweeney, who also started with the Groundlings and was married to Hibbert. Sweeney had asked Tarantino to rewrite the screenplay for the film adaptation of “It’s Pat” – the SNL skit about an androgynous person – and in return agreed to play the character Raquel, heiress to Monster Joe’s Truck and Tow, in “Pulp Fiction.”
“I heard a funny story from Jon Lovitz, who knew Stephen Hibbert, the guy who played the Gimp, from the Groundlings,” Tarantino said in the “Empire” interview. “Jon sees ‘Pulp Fiction’ for the first time and thinks, ‘What the hell is that?’ Then he stays in the theater as the credits roll and sees Stephen’s name. He says loudly: ‘WHAT? I know the gimp?!’”
Hibbert offered an explanation for why he may have been unknowable in his AARP interview. “I have to point out that I was wearing a little fatsuit underneath all the leather stuff,” he said. “And I lost almost 15 pounds during that four-day shoot. Who needs the gym when you have a program like that?”
Career outside of Pulp Fiction
Aside from “Pulp Fiction,” Hibbert worked as a writer for “Late Night With David Letterman” in the mid-1980s, wrote episodes for animated series such as “Darkwing Duck” and “Animaniacs” and for “It’s Pat: The Movie.” In the 1990s he wrote for “Mad TV” and “Boy Meets World,” among others.
As an actor, he had small roles in the series “Newhart” and “Just Shoot Me” and appeared in the films “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me”, “The Cat in the Hat” and “National Treasure: Book of Secrets”.
His Groundlings profile page states that he also worked as a segment producer for MTV and VH1’s award shows and did “punch-up duties” for the “Austin Powers” and “Shrek” films.
Personal life and legacy
According to IMDb, he was married to Sweeney from 1989 to 1994, and later to Alicia Agos from 1996 to 2009. He is survived by his ex-wives and his children.
Hibbert told AARP he is happy with his legacy as the Gimp. “I think it’s one of the greatest films of all time,” he said. “I saw it again recently and had forgotten how weird it was – and what a wonderful time capsule it is for early ’90s Los Angeles.”
