Quentin Tarantino's longtime film editor
Sally Menke has been found dead at the age of 56.
The
LA Times reports she went hiking with her dog in
Beachwood Canyon on Monday, and was found early on Tuesday morning. While Los Angeles has been experiencing a severe heat wave, the cause of her death is not yet known
Menke, who started her professional career editing
Cold Feet in 1983 and, the first
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie in 1990, first met Tarantino when he was looking for an editor to work on
Reservoir Dogs. His main requirement was that whoever got the job would work cheap, but the pair soon became pals and she has edited all of his pics since then
"
We don't work at the studios. Quentin insists on renting little private houses in LA and converting them into edit suites for the duration,” she once said of their collaborations. "
It's very civilised and enabled me to work through both my pregnancies – yes, my babies had Tarantino movies played to them in the womb, but they seem to have turned out OK.”
On her profession, she was happy to remain largely in the background: “
Editors are the quiet heroes of movies and I like it that way. We have a very private relationship with our directors, mostly conducted in very dark rooms.”
She got two Oscar nominations, for
Pulp Fiction and
Inglourious Basterds
Her work with Tarantino saw her become more famous than most of her peers ever become
