George Clooney is 'irritated' that Quentin Tarantino apparently claimed he isn't a movie star

• George Clooney told GQ he's "irritated" with Quentin Tarantino for saying he isn't a movie star.

• Clooney said Tarantino made the comments in a recent interview, but BI couldn't find any similar quotes.

• Clooney has been directing films recently but returns to acting with "Wolfs" on Apple TV+ in September.

George Clooney is friends with his "Wolfs" costar Brad Pitt, but when it comes to Pitt's collaborator Quentin Tarantino, he's OK not playing nice.

During a joint interview with Pitt for GQ, Clooney took a moment to call out Tarantino after it was noted that Pitt works with the famed director (Pitt won his Oscar starring in Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood").

"Quentin said some shit about me recently, so I'm a little irritated by him," Clooney said of the writer-director, who costarred with him in the 1996 Robert Rodriguez vampire movie "From Dusk Till Dawn."

"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 fucking career,'" Clooney said, which prompted a laugh from Pitt.

"So now I'm like, all right, dude, fuck off," Clooney added. "I don't mind giving him shit. He gave me shit."

There's just one problem: Those comments cited by Clooney may not exist, or they may have changed in Clooney's telling of the story. Business Insider was unable to find evidence of Tarantino making comments similar to those Clooney recounted. (BI also contacted Tarantino's rep for comment but did not receive an immediate response.)

Tarantino has, however, criticized the lack of movie stars in this day and age more generally, particularly with the "Marvel-ization" of Hollywood. "You have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters," Tarantino said in a 2022 interview on the "2 Bears, 1 Cave" podcast. "But they're not movie stars. Right? Captain America is the star. Or Thor is the star."

Tarantino has also praised Pitt as "one of the last remaining big-screen movie stars" in a 2022 interview with GQ.

Clooney, 63, has been focusing more lately on his work behind the camera as a director. In the past three years, he's directed movies like "The Midnight Sky," "The Tender Bar," and "The Boys in the Boat."

But with "Wolfs," streaming on Apple TV+ in September following a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Clooney is back to acting.

The Oscar winner will follow that with an upcoming movie from Noah Baumbach that also stars Adam Sandler and Laura Dern.

"I don't know that many people are doing 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' and 'Michael Clayton,'" Clooney said later in the GQ interview, referencing the wide range of roles he's played in his career.

"And I think part of the reason I'm allowed to do that is I had so many genres of films that I was in that weren't successful. You know what I mean?," Clooney said. "If you're not wildly successful at action films, then no one's asking you to do more action films. And the same thing with sort of everything. So part of life for me was always, the lack of massive success allowed me to do other things and try new things."

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