George Clooney is many things. Husband and father of twins. Director of nine films. Civil rights advocate and Democratic fundraiser. An A-list celebrity who still wouldn't be surprised to see on the cover of GQ, Esquire, you name it.
A movie star, but? Not anymore. That's the opinion of Quentin Tarantino, who starred with Clooney early in his film career in the vampire action comedy From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), in which he played Clooney's psychotic brother, much to Clooney's outspoken chagrin.
Were there tensions on set that they never resolved over the years? Some dismissive comments Tarantino made in an interview with Baz Bamingboye for Deadline last year prompted Clooney's nagging insult, which he delivered in a GQ interview published this week - even though no one else paid much attention to it at the time.
"It's been a long time since George Clooney has pulled anyone into an audience," QT declared, essentially arguing that unlike Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt, his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood duo, Clooney didn't really qualify as a movie star these days. He challenged anyone to name a Clooney hit this side of the millennium.
If you're not up to that challenge, forget about the hugely successful Ocean's 11 (2001), its two sequels, or Gravity (2013) - although you should consider that film Sandra Bullock's, not Clooney's.
But Tarantino does have a point, all things considered. Clooney's last 20 years haven't done much to sustain his Ocean's Peak stardom. In fact, they've seen him veer away from the full-time, carefully plotted acting career of, say, his good buddy Pitt.
You could argue that he's enhanced films more with his presence than by his performance. Nothing since Alexander Payne's The Descendants (2011) - dreadful, by the way, but acclaimed - has come close to an Oscar nomination. (He won Best Supporting Actor for Syriana , but that was back in 2006.) There's an underlying sense that he's putting his feet up, not really trying.
His last starring role, in the moderately successful, utterly dull Ticket to Paradise (2022), is a case in point. The film, a remarriage comedy that reunited him with fellow Ocean's squeeze Julia Roberts, seemed like the antithesis of hard work. It was a beach vacation disguised as a gift to their fans.
This cozy outing was the kind of thing Cary Grant often starred in as he approached 60, when he was making films like A Touch of Mink and Charade -suit-and-tie fun that ended his years as a romantic lead. Grant was entering his elder statesman era, with an equally peachy complexion and an aura of wealth. Like Clooney, he had developed a smooth, unflappable persona as everyone's favorite dinner party guest - but he was always at his most interesting when that facade was shattered.
I doubt you'd find Tarantino denying that Cary Grant was a movie star, no matter what. Or Roberts, for that matter - as he explicitly states in that interview - or Harrison Ford. So why is Clooney any different? It must have something to do with the fact that he's stretching himself so thin.
Those other actors have never diluted their untouchable movie-star status by taking on other roles behind the camera. Clooney, on the other hand, has co-written four of the films he's directed and produced seven. Through his production company, Smokehouse Pictures, he's also found a home for projects he doesn't even direct, including The Agency , an upcoming remake of the French political drama The Bureau , starring Michael Fassbender.
But Clooney, whose tequila company has reportedly made his fortune $500 million, hasn't acted in three of his last four films: Suburbicon (2017), The Tender Bar (2021) and The Boys in the Boat (2023). Instead, he's cast the likes of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to carry them. In essence, he's done his best to delegate the lead role to others - and this, more than anything, is what gives Tarantino's comments the ring of validity.
The step down may have coincided with the settling down. Clooney's marriage to human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin in 2014 suddenly made him appear a serious man of the world, no longer a frivolous playboy. But it's their shared charity work, rather than risky cinema, that has been the outward sign of this. If Clooney has grown increasingly bored with the acting stuff, that may also help explain why so much of his energy has been diverted to the political sphere of late.
In June, he hosted a star-studded fundraiser for Biden's presidential campaign, a gala in Los Angeles attended by Roberts, Barbra Streisand, Jack Black and many others. Just a month later, after the president's infamous debate performances raised so many alarm bells, Clooney became one of the most prominent voices urging Biden to step down. His New York Times op-ed included the oft-quoted killer line: "But the one battle he can't win is against time." It ended with a call for Biden to help save democracy by stepping down. Ten days later, he was gone.
Was Clooney's behavior here that of a man with possible ambitions to run for future office? Ronald Reagan effectively ceased to be a movie star with his final acting role in 1964 - the same year he delivered a celebrated speech for Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign.
There's a purity to the concept of the "real" movie star, and it's apolitical. Tarantino wouldn't include character actors in his roster, and infamously excluded cast members from Marvel films. It perhaps stings Clooney that he's had to overcome the stigma of a "TV actor" from the ER days-successful where the likes of David Caruso failed-and still isn't considered a "movie star" in Tarantino's eyes.
And then there's the streaming issue: Even the film Clooney and Pitt are currently promoting together, Wolfs , despite starring two of the world's most famous actors, is getting a token, week-long theatrical release before it hits AppleTV+. Are streaming stars even movie stars? Not in the same way that Bette Davis or Steve McQueen once were. In fact, their numbers seem to be declining overall.
Clooney's current relationship with cinema is less intimate than it might seem, despite all the trappings of stardom - of strutting around European film festivals, arm in arm with Amal - that he retains. Rather than appearing in films himself, it's just as likely that he's been busy fine-tuning production design, rewriting scenes or charming all the extras.
There's something withdrawn about his relationship with on-screen stardom, as if he's uncomfortable living up to it, or doesn't find the roles he's suited for as interesting as the projects he could cast with other people. Consciously or not, his air of boredom with "George Clooney, Movie Star" has gradually dismantled our expectations of him. Perhaps "George Clooney, Democratic Candidate" will one day resurrect them.