Summary

• George Clooney says he's "irritated" by alleged claims from Quentin Tarantino about his status as a movie star.
• Clooney starred opposite Quentin Tarantino in From Dusk Till Dawn, which Tarantino also wrote.
• When looking at the last two decades of Clooney's career, there are a lack of traditional and successful movie-star vehicles.

George Clooney addresses alleged claims from Quentin Tarantino about his movie stardom. After getting his start in the world of TV, Clooney made the jump to movies in the mid-90s and early 2000s. Though Clooney has never starred in a Tarantino-directed film, the actor did appear in 1996's From Dusk Till Dawn, which Tarantino wrote and acted in. As he continues to work regularly in Hollywood, Clooney is next slated to appear opposite Brad Pitt in Wolfs, an Apple TV+ crime thriller directed by Jon Watts.

In a recent interview with GQ to promote Wolfs, Clooney takes aim at Tarantino, claiming that the director essentially said he wasn't a real movie star. It should be noted, however, that it's not clear when or where Tarantino may have made these claims. Clooney, regardless, handles his retort with humor, ultimately using his response to discuss the importance of working with strong directors from strong scripts. Check out his comments below:

Clooney: Quentin said some sh-t about me recently, so I’m a little irritated by him. He did some interview where he was naming movie stars, and he was talking about you, and somebody else, and then this guy goes, “Well, what about George?” He goes, he’s not a movie star. And then 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---ing career.”

Pitt: Heh heh heh heh heh.

Clooney: So now I’m like, all right, dude, f--k off. I don’t mind giving him sh-t. He gave me sh-t. But no, look, we’re really lucky we got to work with these great directors. Director and screenplay is what keeps you alive. And I learned that after doing some really bad films. 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 f--k it up.

George Clooney's Movie Career Explained

Is He A Real Movie Star?

Now, by definition, Clooney could fairly obviously be said to be a movie star. When looking at the last 24 years or so of his career, however, it's not hard to see where Tarantino is coming from, if he did indeed make the claims that Clooney says he did. Clooney's hits, either critically or commercially, since 2000 include The Perfect Storm, three installments in the Ocean's Eleven franchise, Syriana, Michael Clayton, Burn After Reading, and Gravity.

The Ocean's franchise, however, are really all ensemble movies, as is Syriana, and Gravity mostly belongs to lead Sandra Bullock. As far as traditional star-vehicle movies go, Clooney doesn't really have many that worked out beyond Michael Clayton. The American was positioned as a thriller that would cement Clooney as a serious leading man, but that film failed to make much of a mark. Other Clooney films from the 2010s, including The Monuments Men, Tomorrowland, and The Midnight Sky, just didn't strike much of a chord with audiences.

Clooney has teased that Ocean's Fourteen might be in the works, though few concrete updates have emerged on the project.

When looking at stars like Pitt or Tom Cruise, there's a clear difference in their career patterns compared to Clooney's. When either Cruise or Pitt star in the film, they essentially are the film, be it a Mission: Impossible movie or Moneyball. Pitt, for example, also has F1 coming up, which is very much a traditional movie star-type of blockbuster. There's nothing wrong with the direction Clooney has taken his movie career, but Tarantino's alleged comments might not totally be off the mark.

Source: GQ