Stephen Hibbert, the writer and actor who went from being a Groundlings writer to writing for “Late Night with David Letterman” and “Mad TV,” to gaining a cult following as Gimp in “Pulp Fiction,” died on March 2 in Denver, Colorado. He was 68 years old.
His family confirmed the death to Rolling Stone and Fox News Digital, saying he died following a heart attack. In a statement to TMZ, his three children, Ronnie, Rosalind and Greg, said: “This week our father, Stephen Hibbert, passed away unexpectedly. His life was filled with love and dedication to the arts and family. He will be missed by many.”
Hibbert had a long career writing and acting in television comedies and movies, from writing credits on Boy Meets World to Animaniacs to bit roles in Austin Powers and True Jackson, but he was best known to film fans for playing Gimp in his friend Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. The role was a demanding one, as he was prohibited from speaking or showing his face on screen, but still spent hours on set wearing a full-length leather suit.
“I’m really shocked to hear that Stephen Hibbert, the gentleman who played Gimp on Pulp Fiction, has passed away,” Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary told X. “Eli Roth and I were just with him on ‘Days of the Dead.’ He was at the table next to me, and he was just a really great guy. When Quentin decided to do it, he accepted my role as Gimp.” So Stephen stepped in and brought that latex-covered character to life. But I’m glad I got to know him and call him a friend. ”
Hibbert said in an interview that he enjoyed unusual notoriety, including having a Gimp action figure for children to enjoy, and that he regularly appeared at entertainment memorabilia conventions to greet fans.
“I think this is one of the greatest movies of all time,” he told AARP’s Tim Apello in a 2024 profile. “I watched it again recently, and I forgot how funny it was, and it’s a great time capsule of Los Angeles in the early ’90s. … I’ve been to a lot of really fun fan fests, screenings, and conventions, and it’s always so much fun! Spending three days with movie geeks? Yes, please! I think a lot of people are surprised by the fact that I’m a very family-oriented person, straight, and I’m busy building a career as a writer.” ”
Hibbert has written scripts for shows such as “Boy Meets World,” “Tiny Toons Adventures,” “Animaniacs,” “Howie Mandel’s Sunny Skies,” “Random Play,” and “MTV Movie Awards,” and has also performed uncredited punch-ups in numerous feature films. He is said to have also contributed to “Saturday Night Live” as a screenwriter.
His acting credits include “The Cat in the Hat,” “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” “National Treasure: Book of Secrets,” “Dr. Ken,” “Rush Hour,” “True Jackson, VP,” “Twenty Good Years,” “Jericho,” and “Just Shoot Me.”
At the time of Pulp Fiction, Hibbert was married to Julia Sweeney, another star of the film. The two co-wrote “It’s Pat!” The film is an adaptation of a long-running “SNL” sketch that Tarantino rewrote without credit. Hibbert and Sweeney’s friendship with Tarantino dates back to their time together in the Groundlings, which led to their casting for Pulp. Hibbert said Tarantino was “scheduled to be a guest on the Thursday night improv show. He was then and still is much the same: hilarious, endlessly curious, and passionate about movies.”
Regarding his friendship with Tarantino, Hibbert said, “We were basically movie geeks. We used to go to the New Beverly Cinema (decades before filmmakers bought movie theaters) and go to screenings of “Stagecoach” or something like that, and “Pulp Fiction.” At one point during pre-production on “Sion,” he gave me the script to read… “Why don’t you come down and (read) Gimp’s part? He knew that I was an improviser,” he said of his friendship with Tarantino. And in addition to being an actor, he is also a friend and writer. ”At the audition, “he played my master in a weird SM&M triangle… We did this little scene where he commanded me… By the time I got home — this was way back in 1993 — there was a message on the machine: ‘Hey, you got the part. Let’s give it a try.’ It was a three-day shoot, and it was great to work with actors like Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Duane Whitaker, and Peter Green.” (Green passed away in December 2025.)
Hibbert also quipped about his casting director audition with Tarantino, “He intimidated me in his office and I cringed. I felt like I had been training my entire working life for the opportunity to audition for a role like that.”
He continued, “It was a very tough shoot. It was a very tough subject matter, so I was wrapped up in this leather suit from head to toe. And they wanted me to be a little more full-bodied, so they put a little mini fat suit underneath that. I lost about 10, 15 pounds over the course of the three-day shoot, under all the hot lights. And thankfully there was a small shower in the changing room of my little trailer. I took a 30-minute shower afterwards.
“I remember that at the end of a three-day shoot, Bruce Willis had everyone come to his fancy, unique, cool custom trailer, and we all drank gin as the sun set on a beautiful Southern California night in Culver City. We were all like little boys, proud to be naughty and fun, and I still remember that excitement.” I remember that day with a warm glow. ”
Hibbert had a solution to the character’s mystery: “I played the scene as if his tongue had been cut out by the creepy guys who were holding him back. Quentin really liked that idea. Gimp had been trapped there for a while, so he put himself in that situation. I loved it. There was a kind of Stockholm syndrome going on with Gimp, so I played him giddy in a way, pointing lewdly at Butch and jumping around. I wish I’d played it all grumpy. It wouldn’t have been as creepy as it was. ”
Stephen Hibbert attends the Hollywood Autograph Show at the Westin Los Angeles Airport on February 2, 2019 in Los Angeles, California.
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Hibbert was born in Fleetwood, England, and moved with his family to Tustin, California, when he was six years old. A keen Englishman, he still maintained close ties with his maternal family in England, which he loved to visit.
His big break as a writer came on “Late Night with David Letterman” from 1984 to 1986. From there, he worked primarily in animation, appearing in jobs such as “Howie Mandel’s Sunny Skies,” “Mad TV” and “Boy Meets World” in the mid-to-late ’90s.
Hibbert said he adheres to the same character-driven principles whether it’s a sitcom or animation. “It doesn’t matter at all whether it’s a character from a one-off sketch, a character you know well from a sitcom, or something small and bouncy in animation. Stay true to them and everything will work out.”
Hibbert first appeared on screen in 1987 in Newhart’s Student 3, and as excited as he was to meet Bob Newhart, he was just as excited to meet that episode’s “actual guest star” William Windham, whose series My World and Welcome to It was one of his favorite series growing up.
Although “It’s Putt: The Movie” is generally considered an unfortunate “SNL” spinoff, Hibbert had fond memories of it. “At the time, Julia and I were married and writing partners, and Fox approached us to write a movie about Julia’s very popular SNL character, Pat,” he told the website Trainwreck’d Society in a 2014 interview. Although this movie didn’t do as well as any of us had hoped, I think it has some great performances from Julia, Dave Foley, and Charlie Lockett, and there are a lot of really funny jokes and scenes. So I’m actually pretty proud of most of this movie, and even though it’s possible that I’ve actually seen it, I think it’s safe to say it’s better than I remember. ”
When Hibbert wasn’t writing or acting, he was working to share his love of Hollywood legends with the public. “I’m a big movie buff, so I took a little part-time job as a tour guide for this tour company in Hollywood and I loved it…it wasn’t a tour of movie stars’ homes…we got to see Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard and all these famous places and share knowledge about Hollywood history and L.A. history in general.”
Of course, his role as Gimp automatically gave him status whenever it came up in conversation. But they quickly realized they needed to take steps to keep certain types of fans at bay. “Pulp opened this weekend, and I was visiting my mom and dad in San Juan Capistrano. When I got home, I had 24 messages on my answering machine, mostly from guys saying they enjoyed my performance so much they wanted to grab coffee? Oh no! These guys had to wait for the end credits to see who played Gimp. Then they found a pay phone and called L.A. I had to call 411 and get my number. I immediately changed my number and went private.”
His proudest accomplishment was actually not as a gimp, but as a volunteer tutor and tutor coordinator for School on Wheel.
“It was fun being with Mike Myers working on ‘Austin Powers’ or something, but what’s really cool and what I’m really proud of, besides my three amazing kids, is working with ‘School on Wheel,'” he said in a podcast interview. School on Wheel is a non-profit organization. “Tutors work with homeless children wherever they are. Unfortunately, it’s an invisible population. But over six years, I worked one-on-one with about 50-plus kids, and I can tell you, without exception, all of them were wonderful people. It’s a bit of a cliché, but it’s true. Children are incredibly resilient.”
Hibbert moved to Denver in the late 2010s and described himself as “semi-retired” from show business after moving. In Colorado, he taught improvisational writing and sketch writing at the Bovine Metropolis Theater in downtown Denver, and most recently at the Denver School of the Arts.
In 2021, he told North Palm Beach Life, “I feel very fortunate to have had a career in show business spanning over 30 years.” “It’s an incredibly difficult gap to frown upon, but I feel lucky to be able to make a living and now have a pension…I just want to publicly say how grateful I am to all the wonderful people I’ve met and worked with, many of whom are still a part of my life.”
When asked by AARP in 2024 what advice he would give to his younger self, he replied: “My advice to my younger self would be, ‘Believe in yourself more – you never really know what you’re doing – and go to the dentist every year for a check-up.'”
Hibbert was known among his showbiz colleagues for his upbeat personality and understanding of various arts. His diverse interests were evident on social media, where he frequently posted photos of glamorous screen sirens and classic fine art paintings from Hollywood’s Golden Age. His Facebook profile quotes Wordsmith. “The best parts of life are the small, nameless acts of kindness and love that go unremembered.”
His last Facebook post, on March 1st, was a beautiful Ukrainian painting of sunset, “Sunset on the Lake” (1900 by Serhii Wasilkivsky), with the caption “Wishing you a peaceful night.”
Hibbert is survived by ex-wife Sweeney and Alicia Agos, and three children with Agos: Ronnie, Rosalind, and Greg.
