George Clooney says he would be ‘honoured’ to work with actors Quentin Tarantino criticised

George Clooney said he would be “honoured” to work with Paul Dano, Owen Wilson and Matthew Lillard while speaking at AARP’s Movies for Grownups awards on 10 January, actors who were heavily criticised last month by Quentin Tarantino. Clooney said: “By the way, Paul Dano and Owen Wilson and Matthew Lillard, I would be honoured to work with those actors.

Honoured.” He described his new film, Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, as a movie “made by people who love actors” and said he does not “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 backlash after criticising Dano, Lillard and Wilson on Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast.

Tarantino said There Will Be Blood would have ranked higher on his list of the century’s best films but for Daniel Day-Lewis’s co-star, calling Dano “[weak] … weak sauce, man. He’s a weak sister.” He also described Dano as “such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy”, “the weakest fucking actor” in the Screen Actors Guild and said, “I don’t care for him.

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 The Descendants (2011) and with Wilson in Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox (2009), and is yet to collaborate with Dano.

Key Topics

Culture, George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Dano, Owen Wilson, Matthew Lillard