Bemoaning the culture’s current atmosphere of cruelty – and making a nameless reference to director Quentin Tarantino and the swipe he took last month at a trio of actors – George Clooney is standing by those very performers.
In a speech at Saturday’s AARP’s Movies for Grownups Awards, Clooney, accepting his best actor award for Jay Kelly, said, “I don’t enjoy watching people be cruel to actors, and by the way, Paul Dano and Owen Wilson and Matthew Lillard, I would be honored to work with those actors. Honored.
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“We are living in a time of cruelty,” Clooney went on. “We don’t need to be adding to it.”
In December on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast Tarantino was discussing one of his favorite movies, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood but harshly criticized Dano’s performance, calling it “weak sauce” and saying Dano is the “weakest f*cking actor in SAG.” He also slammed actors Lillard and Wilson.
Clooney’s AARP comment on the matter came while the Jay Kelly star was talking about the movie being “made by people who love actors” and saying he has “a great affinity” for actors and doesn’t enjoy “watching people be cruel” to them.
Also at Saturday’s AARP event, Clooney took some self-deprecating jabs at himself, noting that “Movies for Grownups just means old people. I realize now that the only way I was going to win anything [tonight] is that Timothée Chalamet is too goddamn young.”
Later, when presenting his former ER castmate Noah Wyle with a best actor award for The Pitt, Clooney joked that AARP should do a “Sexiest Man Still Alive” issue. “I would nominate Noah Wyle as the first guy,” Clooney said. “When I grow up, I want to be Noah Wyle.”
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