George Clooney Fires Back at Quentin Tarantino Over His Brutal Paul Dano Comments
George Clooney isn’t holding back after Quentin Tarantino took some harsh public swings at fellow actors, including Paul Dano, and the situation has turned into one of the more uncomfortable Hollywood back and forths in recent memory.
What started as another unfiltered Tarantino rant has now pulled in Clooney, who made it clear he isn’t interested in letting comments like these slide.
The controversy kicked off when the Pulp Fiction filmmaker appeared on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast to talk through his personal list of the top 20 movies of the 21st century. While praising There Will Be Blood and director Paul Thomas Anderson, Tarantino turned his attention to Dano’s performance and went well beyond simple criticism.
As a reminder, Tarantino said, “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 is the weak sister,” before escalating further by calling him the “weakest f***ing actor in SAG.” He also dismissed Dano as “a weak, weak, uninteresting guy.”
The remarks didn’t sit well with a lot of people in the industry, and Clooney became one of the more high profile voices to respond. While accepting the Best Actor award at AARP’s Movies for Grownups Awards for his work in Jay Kelly, the actor used the moment to defend Dano along with actors Tarantino had also taken shots at, including Owen Wilson and Matthew Lillard.
“By the way, Paul Dano, Owen Wilson, and Matthew Lillard, I would be honored to work with those actors. Honored,” Clooney said, adding that Jay Kelly was made “by people who love actors.”
Clooney then expanded on why Tarantino’s comments bothered him. “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. We don’t need to be adding to it.”
The tension between Clooney and Tarantino didn’t start with Dano, either. In a 2024 interview, Clooney addressed a separate jab Tarantino took at his career, and his irritation was obvious.
“Quentin said some s*** about me recently, so I’m a little irritated by him,” he explained. “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.”
Clooney continued, “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****** career.’ So now I’m like, all right, dude, f*** off. I don’t mind giving him s***. He gave me s***.”
Tarantino, of course, doesn’t seem overly concerned with the reaction to his opinions. Still, many fans and filmmakers have pointed out the irony that the director behind Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and Inglourious Basterds struggled as an actor before focusing entirely on directing, while Dano has built an acclaimed career.
Clooney obviously isn’t interested in letting personal attacks on actors go unchecked, especially when they come from someone with as much influence as Tarantino.