George Clooney shared a cover story for GQ with his longtime friend and co-star Brad Pitt ahead of the release of their new film “Wolfs,” and he got very candid when discussing the state of movie stars in Hollywood. Clooney jokingly responded to Quentin Tarantino, who directed Pitt to an Oscar in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” and claimed that he recently shaded Clooney by claiming he was no longer a movie star. Clooney and Tarantino shared the screen together in 1996’s “From Dusk Till Dawn.”
“Quentin said some things about me recently, so I’m a little upset with him,” Clooney said. “He did an interview where he mentioned movie stars, and he was talking about [Brad]And another guy, and then this guy said, “Well, what about George?” He said, he's not a movie star. And then he literally said something like, “Name me a movie from the millennium.” And I said, “Since a thousand years? “This is pretty much my entire career.”
“Now I'm like, 'Well, get off my buddy, I don't mind bothering him,'” Clooney added.
diverse I have reached out to Tarantino's representative for comment.
While Clooney's status as a movie star may be debatable, it's certain that Hollywood no longer produces movie stars the way it used to when Clooney and Pitt were rising through the ranks.
“Well, they didn’t develop stars the way the studio systems used to,” Clooney said when asked about the star shortage in Hollywood. “We were at the end of that, where you could work in a studio and make three or four movies, and there was some plan for it. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case now. So it’s hard to sell someone something in exchange for a star.”
“But it was a great time for me as a young actor,” he added from a different perspective. “Because when I was a young actor, if you looked at the back of the Los Angeles Times every Monday morning, there were 64 shows being made. And out of those 64 shows, if you were actually in one of them, you were trying to get in the top 20 to keep your show on the air. But that was it. Then the studios were making five movies a year. Now there are 600 shows. So there’s a lot of work for actors.”
Clooney has had only limited acting involvement over the past few years, but he's ramping up his output with films like “Wolfs” and the upcoming Noah Baumbach film on Netflix, which stars Adam Sandler and Laura Dern. The Oscar winner is currently 40 years old as an actor, a shocking milestone for him.
“I remember talking to [Matt] “Damon talked about this 25 years ago, when he had a big hit with his movie and won an Oscar,” Clooney said. “I said to myself, ‘Know that if you have a 10-year career, and you play at this level, that’s a big award.’ Nobody can last longer than that. So, yeah, I’m surprised that I still have the work.”
“There’s a story that people like to do with me, which is that I’m always playing a version of myself,” Clooney later added of why his career has lasted so long. “And I always say, ‘Well, I don’t know that many people do ‘Brother, Where Art Thou?’ and ‘Michael Clayton.’ And I think part of the reason I’m allowed to do that is because I’ve been in a lot of movies that haven’t been successful. You know what I mean? If you’re not hugely successful in action movies, no one’s going to ask you to do more action movies. It’s the same with pretty much everything. So it’s always been a part of life for me, that not having huge success has allowed me to do other things and try new things.”
Clooney and Pitt’s “Wolfs” is set to have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival before streaming on Apple TV+ starting September 27. The film will be in theaters for a week starting September 20. Head over to GQ’s website to read the full cast cover story.
