3 hours ago
4
George Clooney has said he would be “honoured” to work with three actors who were heavily criticised by Quentin Tarantino last month. Speaking at AARP’s Movies for Grownups awards on 10 January, Clooney said: “By the way, Paul Dano and Owen Wilson and Matthew Lillard, I would be honoured to work with those actors. Honoured.”
Clooney continued by describing his new film, Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, as a movie “made by people who love actors – that’s an important part. People I’ve known most of my life … actually, most of them are actors. I have a great affinity [for them], and I don’t enjoy watching people be cruel.”
“We are living in a time of cruelty,” Clooney concluded. “We don’t need to be adding to it.”
In December 2025, Tarantino faced considerable backlash for his critiques of actors Paul Dano, Matthew Lillard and Owen Wilson while appearing on Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast. The director said There Will Be Blood would have ranked higher than No 5 on his personal list of the best films of the century so far, were it not for Daniel Day-Lewis’s co-star.
“[It] would stand a good chance at being No 1 or 2 if it didn’t have a big, giant flaw in it … and the flaw is Paul Dano,” Tarantino said. “Obviously, it’s supposed to be a two-hander, but it’s also drastically obvious that it’s not a two-hander. [Dano] is weak sauce, man. He’s a weak sister.”
Tarantino continued by describing Dano as “such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy”, “the weakest fucking actor” in the Screen Actors Guild”, and confirmed that he had never enjoyed his performance in anything. “I don’t care for him,” he said. “I don’t care for Owen Wilson, and I don’t care for Matthew Lillard.”
Clooney has previously shared the screen with Lillard in Alexander Payne’s Oscar-winning 2011 film The Descendants, and co-starred with Wilson in Wes Anderson’s stop-motion adaptation of Fantastic Mr Fox (2009). He is yet to collaborate with Dano.
Many of Dano’s former co-workers defended the actor following Tarantino’s attack, including Ben Stiller, Batman director Matt Reeves, and Day-Lewis, whose representatives told the Guardian he agreed with the sentiments expressed in an Instagram fan post declaring Dano “one of the best and most talented actors of his generation”.
Speaking at a fan convention a few days after Tarantino’s critique, Lillard said his words had been damaging. “It fucking sucks,” he said. “And you wouldn’t say that to Tom Cruise. You wouldn’t say that to somebody who’s a top-line actor in Hollywood. I’m very popular in this room. I’m not very popular in Hollywood. Two totally different microcosms, right? And so, you know, it’s humbling, and it hurts.”
Wilson has yet to comment.
Clooney and Tarantino worked on Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 film From Dusk Till Dawn but have not teamed up since and their relationship has been chequered.
“Quentin said some shit about me recently, so I’m a little irritated by him,” Clooney told GQ last year. “He did some interview where he was naming movie stars, and he was talking about [Brad Pitt], and somebody else, and then this guy goes, ‘Well, what about George?’ He goes, ‘He’s not a movie star.’”
