George Clooney is "a little irritated” with Quentin Tarantino right now

Won’t anyone think of the movie stars? Reports of the death of the topline actor have been coming in fast and furious over the past few years, but according to George Clooney—very arguably a real-life movie star—those reports have been greatly exaggerated. Well, specifically by Quentin Tarantino, whom he’s a little peeved about right now.

“Quentin said some shit about me recently, so I’m a little irritated by him,” Clooney said in a new interview with GQ. “He did some interview where he was naming movie stars, and he was talking about you (Brad Pitt), and somebody else, and then this guy goes, “Well, what about George?” He goes, he’s not a movie star.”

While it’s always fun to witness a “stars, they’re just like us” playground fight amongst Hollywood’s best and brightest like this, to have someone you’d previously worked with devalue your entire life’s work obviously stings. In a way, that’s exactly what Tarantino did. “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 fucking career,’” Clooney continued. “So now I’m like, all right, dude, fuck off.”

While these sound like fighting words on paper, the whole spat does seem like just a bit of playful banter. “I don’t mind giving him shit. He gave me shit,” the actor continued, before allowing, “Look, we’re really lucky we got to work with these great directors. Director and screenplay is what keeps you alive… You can’t make a good film out of a bad script. You can’t do it. You can make a bad film out of a good script. You can fuck it up.”

While Tarantino is more closely associated with Clooney’s GQ interview partner, Brad Pitt, the two do have a history. The director played Clooney’s brother in Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 film From Dusk Till Dawn, which Tarantino also wrote. That tracks; no offense to Tarantino, but any of us would need some major sway to pull off a vanity casting of that magnitude. Tarantino apparently thought he and Clooney actually did look like brothers, which led to this delightful impression by the latter. The visuals may be, um, in the eye of the beholder, but the two A-listers are certainly squabbling like brothers right now.

Incredible Tarantino impression by Clooney here pic.twitter.com/P7xpkS0lg8

— John Frankensteiner (@JFrankensteiner) August 5, 2023