George Clooney has expressed his frustration with Quentin Tarantino after the renowned director made a remark that seemed to diminish Clooney’s career. During a joint GQ interview with his “Wolfs” co-star Brad Pitt on Tuesday, August 13, Clooney, 63, didn’t hold back in sharing his irritation.
“Quentin said some s–t about me recently, so I’m a little irritated by him,” Clooney stated. He explained that Tarantino, 61, had mentioned in an interview that he didn’t consider Clooney a movie star. “He did some interview where he was naming movie stars, and he was talking about [Brad], and somebody else, and then this guy goes, ‘Well, what about George?’ He goes, ‘He’s not a movie star.’”
Clooney, who has enjoyed a highly successful career spanning several decades, found the comment particularly insulting. “He literally said something like, ‘Name me a movie since the millennium.’ And I was like, ‘Since the millennium? That’s kind of my whole f–king career.’”
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Clearly irked, Clooney didn’t shy away from addressing Tarantino directly. “So now I’m like, ‘All right, dude, f–k off,’” he quipped, adding that he doesn’t mind returning the banter Tarantino dished out. “I don’t mind giving him s–t. He gave me s–t.”
The two Hollywood heavyweights share a history, having worked together on the 1996 film “From Dusk Till Dawn,” where Tarantino not only wrote the screenplay but also starred alongside Clooney as Richie Gecko.
Tarantino’s comments, made during a November 2022 episode of Tom Segura’s “2 Bears 1 Cave” podcast, extended beyond Clooney. The director expressed his belief that today’s actors aren’t true movie stars, attributing this to the “Marvel-ization of Hollywood movies.” “You have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters. But they’re not movie stars. Right? Captain America is the star. Or Thor is the star,” Tarantino remarked.
Clooney, while clearly perturbed by Tarantino’s remarks, also offered his own perspective on the changing nature of stardom in Hollywood. He noted that the decline in the traditional studio system has made it harder to create stars like in the past. “Well, they haven’t developed stars the way the studio system used to,” Clooney reflected. “We kind of were at the very end of that, where you could work at a studio and do three or four films, and there was some plan to it. And I don’t think that’s necessarily the case anymore.”
However, Clooney remains optimistic about the opportunities available to young actors today. “It’s actually a great time to be a young actor in Hollywood right now,” he said, pointing out the vast number of shows and films being produced compared to when he started his career. “When I was a young actor, if you looked at the back of the L.A. Times every Monday morning they had the 64 shows that were made. And of those 64 shows, if you’re actually on one of them, you’re trying to be in the top 20 to keep your show on the air. But that was it. And then the studios were doing five films a year. Now there’s 600 shows. So there’s a lot more work for actors.”
Despite the tension, Clooney’s remarks highlight not just the personal nature of Tarantino’s comments, but also the broader changes in Hollywood that have affected how stars are made—and perceived—today.
