Hollywood actors speak to GQ about the paparazzi, ageing … and how many granola bars it’s safe to eat at 60
George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s almost 30-year friendship was precipitated by Princess Diana’s death, the Hollywood actors have revealed.
Pitt, 60, said his close friend and fellow Oscar-winner “first stood out” to him when he made a speech criticising the press after Diana was killed in a car crash in 1997 while she was being pursued by paparazzi.
“We’ve been in Paris in those same chases”, Clooney, 63, told GQ during a joint cover interview with Pitt from Chateau Miraval, Pitt’s French vineyard.
“The hunt? I can’t tell you, I can’t describe it to anyone. It was insane. You would have nine cars following you. They’re waiting for you,” Pitt said.
The Fight Club actor added: “Oh my God. And you stop at a stoplight and they all get out and it’s flash-flash-flash-flash-flash-flash.
“And you can’t see anything, and you can’t move because you’re trapped between cars at a stoplight. It’s a horrible feeling.
“It’s really invasive to know people are out there and they’re hiding in the bushes. It’s really a s—–, s—– feeling. And so George got up and commented on that after Princess Diana. And that’s when I saw: this guy’s got something that the rest of us don’t. Like, I saw the leader in that moment.”
After Diana’s death, Clooney accused magazines and newspapers of turning photographers into “bounty hunters” by buying their pictures of celebrities.
He told reporters at the Screen Actors Guild office in Los Angeles at the time: “If you weren’t hiding behind the profession of journalism, you would be an accomplice to a crime, and you would go to jail.”
Elsewhere in the GQ cover interview, Pitt likened being famous to being a “gazelle” being pursued in the animal kingdom.
“You watch those nature documentaries. There’s that one gazelle that gets caught off. And then the lions and then the cheetahs are chasing him. And then afterward if they escape, they go through the trauma, the shakes,” he said.
Clooney added that while some celebrities were able to walk around cities such as New York without being followed, the interest in him, Pitt, and around four other stars had “never subsided”.
He said the interest was so intense he would avoid going to the hospital for things you would usually seek medical attention for.
“I have a goal of trying to protect, I don’t want pictures of my kids. We deal in very serious subject matters, with very serious bad guys, and we don’t want to have photos of our kids out there,” he said.
“So we have to work hard at trying to stay private, and it’s tricky, as you can imagine. There’s times you will avoid going to the hospital with something that you would normally go to the hospital for.”
He added: “You will assess how bad something is before you go.”
The actors, who are both in their sixties, also discussed ageing.
Clooney said he told his wife, Amal Clooney, “it doesn’t matter how many granola bars I eat. In 20 years, I’m 80”, adding: “That’s a real number where your bones are brittle and your muscle mass is gone. So s— changes.”
The actor was one of several key Democrat figures to call on Joe Biden, 81, to drop out of the presidential race.
Clooney also described how he was a “little irritated” by Quentin Tarrantino for refusing to describe him as a “movie star” in a recent interview.
“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.’”
Pitt also revealed he was criticised by Alcoholics Anonymous for speaking publicly about attending meetings.
Pitt said the group “came down on me” for talking about his experience.”
They were like ‘It’s anonymous.’ I was like ‘Well yeah, but if I want to…’.”
Brad Pitt and Alcoholics Anonymous
Brad Pitt has spoken about his experience attending “freeing” all-male Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings several times over the past five years.
After his ex-wife Angelina Jolie filed for divorce in 2016, Pitt said went to AA sessions for a year-and-a-half.
Once Hollywood’s golden couple, the two actors separated in 2016 after Pitt was accused of being drunk and aggressive on a plane during a family trip from France to California.
“I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privileges,” Pitt told the New York Times in 2019 about his decision to become sober.
Speaking about his recovery group, the father of six said: “You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard.
“It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself.”
He added: “It was actually really freeing just to expose the ugly sides of yourself. There’s great value in that.”
Speaking about the experience again in 2022, Pitt told GQ magazine: “I had a really cool men’s group here that was really private and selective, so it was safe.”
He added: “Because I’d seen things of other people who had been recorded while they were spilling their guts and that’s just atrocious to me.”
George Clooney and Brad Pitt Are Hollywood’s BFFs
It is the laugh you hear first. Heh heh heh heh heh. Unhurried. Like he’s got all the time in the world to do it. Some of the buildings here at Château Miraval, where Brad Pitt is just now tumbling out from wherever he spent the night, cup of coffee in hand, are nearly 200 years old, and the laugh rings off the stonework: heh heh heh heh heh. It rings through the terraces of olive trees. It ruffles the stone pots of lavender and rosemary. It sends the literal butterflies alighting on literal pink blossoms into the air, up toward the Provençal sky, which is the same soft blue as it was when Matisse painted it. It echoes off the lake and the vineyards and the ancient chapel and the black Mercedes convertible, top down, that is now arriving, with George Clooney at the wheel. Black sunglasses. Black polo. Loafers. When he sees Pitt, he yells: Brother! And then you hear the laugh again: heh heh heh heh heh.
Pitt and Clooney—they are used to living like this. Surrounded by beauty. In majestic isolation. They have been friends for nearly a quarter-century, in part because of what they share: an understanding of where the road that every young actor dreams of walking—that road that represents some intoxicating combination of money and attention and success—ends up. It ends up here. In a place a regular human could barely describe (trust me, I’m trying), let alone relate to. What else can you do but laugh?
Yesterday, Pitt was at Silverstone Circuit in England, shooting a massive film about an F1 driver that’s now titled…F1, riding in a custom-built F2 car stretched to F1 size, hitting 160 down the straights. “We’ve been doing this so long,” Pitt says. “I think it gets harder and harder to find a new experience or something to be excited about, and this one has been that for me.” Clooney, for his part, has just come from Italy, where he is finishing an untitled Noah Baumbach film with Adam Sandler and Laura Dern. In the movie, Clooney plays a movie star—“It’s a stretch,” he says, laughing.
Both men are due back to work within a day or two. But for the moment they are here, at Miraval, Pitt’s sometime residence, since he and his then wife Angelina Jolie bought the property in 2011. (In 2021, she sold her half, a transaction that is now being bitterly and extensively litigated.) Clooney and his family have a home in the area too, just down the road, on an estate they bought three years ago. “Literally, I just drove from my house,” Clooney says. “I’ve been there for two years. I’ve never been here. It’s nine minutes.”
“During the pandemic,” Pitt clarifies, about when and how the Clooney family purchased their estate. “Online.”
“Yeah, online,” Clooney admits.
There is a lot of this—rich-guy teasing. Comparing notes on Portuguese stonemasons, the craftsmen to whom you turn to build and maintain your terraces of olive trees and such. This lake right here, Clooney asks: Is it natural? Pitt says it’s runoff, from the winery, but a few years ago he had it enlarged, and Clooney mutters to himself: This guy enlarges his lake. Who does that?
There are just so few people who have experienced what they’ve experienced. Who relate to the fame, the money, the statelessness, the decades of living a public life. Not to mention the work. Since Ocean’s Eleven, they’ve done two sequels in that franchise, costarred in the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading, and recently reunited for a movie they shot last year called Wolfs. In Wolfs, which is written and directed by Jon Watts and produced by Apple, Clooney, and Pitt, the two men play rival fixers hired for the same job. It’s a comedy, it’s an action film, it’s an excuse for two guys who like to finish each other’s sentences in real life to do it in a movie again.
Wolfs is also a not so subtle meditation on its two stars, who play two highly competent guys who may be finally aging out of the job. Clooney is 63; Pitt is 60. They are, in many respects, the last of their kind. “I remember when I was 20 years old and I heard somebody died at 63?” Clooney says. “I’m like: They lived a good life.”
Heh heh heh heh heh.
But it is a good life. Pitt asks the two of us if we’d like to descend beneath the chapel to something he calls the summer kitchen, which turns out to be, well, an outdoor kitchen and a terrace and a couple of dining tables overlooking the vineyard and the lake.
The last time I talked to Clooney was during the pandemic; I have a memory of him, hair grown out and shaggy, speaking to me on Zoom from his living room, holding his son in his lap. The last time I talked to Pitt was in a tiny pool house in La Cañada at a home that belonged to neither of us. Looking at the view in front of us now, I keep trying to decide which of these three experiences was the most surreal. But surreal is kind of the way it goes with these guys.
GQ: George, you’re coming from the set of this Noah Baumbach film. In the past decade, you’ve made a point of not acting much, especially in films that you didn’t also direct. Now, with Wolfs and the Noah Baumbach project, you’re starring in other people’s movies again. Why?
George Clooney: The main reason is that it is a year on the road to direct, and now my kids are of a certain age. We’re not going to uproot our kids out of school and run around. Before that, they could just come with us and we would all go. But that’s different now. So now I’m going to just probably focus on other things, like acting.
Brad, you and I once had a conversation where you too said something to the effect of: “I’m just trying to work less.” You were doing one movie a year, maybe.
Brad Pitt: Well, now I’m doing one movie in a year and a half. [Laughter.] No, I’m still kind of on the same trajectory. I feel the same. I’m really just trying to enjoy the people that I love around me and just living. [He gestures out at the vineyard.] I don’t know how to not sound cheesy about it, but just the air is fresh and grass is green and I’ve just kind of become that guy a little bit.
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Clooney: It’s also, there’s an interesting thing that happens—you’re 60 now, right?
Pitt: Yep.
Clooney: [Chuckles.] It makes me laugh. When I turned 60, my wife and I had a nice dinner. We were talking and I said, “Look, I’m 60.” Now I’m 63. And I said, “So here’s the thing, I can still play basketball with the boys. I can still hang, do a lot of shit. Physically, I’m in pretty good shape still.” I said, “But it doesn’t matter how many granola bars I eat. In 20 years, I’m 80. And that’s a different number.” That’s a real number where your bones are brittle and your muscle mass is gone. So shit changes. So these next 20 years we have to really focus not just on work, although you’ve got to continue to work. We also have to focus on life.
Pitt: You start to understand this idea of mortality [Clooney laughs knowingly] and that it is something we all have to deal with. You just become more aware of it.
In Wolfs, you guys both play hypercompetent guys, very good at what you do, but maybe you’re aging out. I understand that art is not life, but I wondered if you identified.
Clooney: Look, we’re not stupid. But I also do feel like there’s still some gas in the tank.
One thing you once said to me was, “If you look at actors’ careers—like Cary Grant’s, for instance—they are shorter than you think.”
Pitt: Is it? Are they?
Clooney: Dude, yeah. It’s like 20 years. It’s short. But Cary Grant, he was interesting. He saw himself in a movie, I can’t remember who he was opposite. And he just said, “I look too old to be kissing that girl.” And he quit. And he had another 20 years of just being Cary Grant in life. But a lot of actors that you think of—Clark Gable, those guys—it wasn’t as long as you think. Twenty-five years, tops. And, you know, it’s been like 40 for us already, which is fucking scary. [Ed note: Grant and Gable both had careers that lasted a little longer than 20 or 25 years. But the point stands.]
Are you surprised you’re still going?
Clooney: Yes! I remember I talked to Damon about this 25 years ago, when he first hit with his movie and won the Oscar. I was like, “Just know that if you get a 10-year career, playing at that level, it’s an absolute jackpot.” Nobody sustains it much longer than that. So yeah, I’m surprised that I still have the work.
Brad, one thing you like to say in interviews is: “I’m on my last leg.”
Pitt: I meant that as seasons. You know, there was moving out from the safety of the Ozarks. You embark on this thing and it’s all about discovery and it’s really exciting and interesting and painful and awful and all of it. And then when you’re allowed into the big leagues, it becomes another game of responsibilities and things to answer to. But also opportunity and delight and working with people you really respect. And then it’s this time now. It’s: What are these last years going to be? Because I see my parents are very—I see just what George was explaining. In your 80s, the body becomes more frail. And yet I look at Frank Gehry. He’s just the loveliest man. And he’s 95 and still making great art and he’s got a beautiful family. And I think that’s kind of the formula to stay creative and keep loving your life.
Clooney: We’re lucky too. We’re in a profession that doesn’t force you into retirement.
Well, there’s two sides of that coin, right? There is that cliché for actors of: All of a sudden the phone stops ringing.
Clooney: Okay, but there’s two ways of doing this, right? The phone stops ringing if your decision is that you want to continue to be the character that you were when you were 35, and you want a softer lens. But if you’re willing to, say, move down the call sheet a little bit and do interesting character work, then you can kind of—you have to make peace with the idea that you’re going to die! I will walk up to people and they’ll be like, “Oh, you’re older than I thought.” And I’m like, “I’m 63, you dumb shit!” It’s just: That’s life. And so as long as you can make peace with the idea of change, then it’s okay. The hard part is, and I know a lot of actors who do this—and you do too—who don’t let that go and try desperately to hold onto it.
Clooney is about to say more, but now here come two adorable children, followed by a tall, elegant woman in a white dress, who turns out to be Amal Clooney.
“This is Alexander, this is Ella,” Clooney says, introducing his seven-year-old twins, who have already begun climbing all over Pitt.
Amal gives Pitt a hug. She says the property is amazing. “The kids were like, ‘Is this all the same house?’ ”
“Do you guys like animals?” Pitt asks the twins. “We have a bunch of animals over there that need feeding.” He begins reciting the animal population of Château Miraval—donkeys, bunnies, mini horses—as Alexander and Ella cheer.
Eventually, we end up all sitting down for lunch—“Guests on this side,” Pitt says, and so Clooney, his wife, and I all end up in a row, looking out at the property, facing Brad Pitt.
“How did your interview go?” Amal asks.
“We just started,” Clooney says.
“We got eight minutes of interview,” Pitt says.
“Your timing was perfect,” Clooney says.
“I’m sure that’s sufficient,” Amal says to me, laughing.
Out on the lawn, their children have begun scaling a piece of sculpture, which, to be fair, looks like something temptingly halfway between a ladder and a table.
“Try not to do dumb things,” Clooney yells to them, in the weary voice of fathers the world over. “Make good choices.”
Both men start telling Amal about the fashion they were trying on for their GQ shoot.
“Your man was venturing out,” Pitt says.
“What did you do? Are you wearing a radical color?” Amal asks.
“I’m too old to care,” Clooney says.
“That’s another thing about getting older,” Pitt says. “It’s too much work to control things. It’s better to just slot in some way to the current.”
That’s the zen, admirable thing, but can you actually do it?
Pitt: Oh yeah. It’s so much easier. Like, I really don’t think things out in that way. Just more and more, if it feels right, I just trust that barometer and go.
And you’ve always been like that?
Pitt: I’ve become more and more like that. When you’re younger, there’s perceived threats out there, and things you think you need to protect against. And then you realize: That’s just exhausting.
Clooney: You’re also much more willing to make fun of yourself. When you’re young, you’re always trying to protect something. When I first got to the place where I could pick a movie, I took everything that came my way. Because I didn’t understand that I was going to be held responsible for the movie. So I get offered Batman & Robin, I call my friends like, “I’m going to be Batman!” You don’t really think it through. And then after I did that for three films, where they didn’t really work, I was like: Oh, I’m going to be held responsible. I need to go back to: good script, good director, if I’m allowed to pick. And that means you have to take money out of the issue. Because remember: When you’re first famous, when somebody offers you a lot of money, you’re like, “Fuck, I’ve never been offered money before. I’ve never been offered anything.”
Brad, do you feel the same way?
Pitt: What he’s talking about is the realization of how much of it is on your back. And then you go, “Okay, that’s all right. But I’m going to pick.” When you realize you’re responsible, then you step up and you start making calls. Like, I got in my contract when I did Seven, having had a bad experience on a movie before where they edited out scenes I thought were vital, in Seven I put it in my contract: The wife’s head stays in the box.
Clooney: I bet they tried to take it out, didn’t they?
Pitt: Absolutely. And the character kills John Doe. I got both in my contract. So sure enough, when it comes time, they come and they go, “You know, he’d be much more heroic if he didn’t.” And you go, “Yeah, he would. But he’s not.” And then: “It’s too much with the wife. What if we put the dogs’ heads in? It should be the dogs’ heads.” Nope.
Wolfs almost feels like a throwback in the way that the pitch is, basically, you two guys: It’s not IP, it’s not a sequel, it’s just two movie stars on the poster. We don’t see a lot of movies like that anymore. Why not?
Clooney: Well, they haven’t developed stars the way the studio system used to. We kind of were at the very end of that, where you could work at a studio and do three or four films, and there was some plan to it. And I don’t think that’s necessarily the case anymore. So it’s harder for you to sell somebody something on the back of a star. But it’s a great time as a young actor. Because when I was a young actor, if you looked at the back of the LA Times every Monday morning they had the 64 shows that were made. And of those 64 shows, if you’re actually on one of them, you’re trying to be in the top 20 to keep your show on the air. But that was it. And then the studios were doing five films a year. Now there’s 600 shows. So there’s a lot more work for actors.
When a Hollywood studio like Paramount—storied, historic, but now relatively small in comparison with places like Netflix or Apple—goes up for sale, as it did this summer, do people try to enlist you guys in that? I could see your respective opinions, coming from two major Hollywood figures, carrying weight.
Pitt: Not me. You get enlisted much more than I do.
Clooney: I get enlisted in a lot of things. But not on the sale of a studio.
Do you feel invested in the outcome one way or another? I mean it’s potentially one less studio. That feels like it means something.
Clooney: I mean, Paramount’s one of the great original studios. But some of it you just have no say in. Because the business, it’s all getting eaten up. It’s like everything—it’s all getting eaten up by big Walmarts around the world and Amazons around the world. Our version of mom-and-pop shops in a small town is Paramount.
One of the things I really like about Wolfs is yes, there’s a lot of action, but there’s also a lot of the two of you guys riffing off of each other. Are those Ocean’s Eleven muscles you’re using?
Pitt: It’s time-off muscles. That’s 30 years of time off between the shoots. [Ed note: Technically, it’s been 23 years since Pitt and Clooney shot Ocean’s Eleven.]
Clooney: But there’s an art to overlapping dialogue, right? Because when you do it poorly, you’re overlapping before you heard the phrase or the word that would key you to speak. And so what’s fun with Brad is, and I think you’re right, it’s just years of doing this shit, talking together—
Pitt: Talking shit between takes.
I’ve been able to talk to both of you guys about acting before, and you have very different philosophies. Brad, you’ve said: “Acting is like music. You just kind of feel the rhythm.” And George, you’ve talked about admiring guys like Spencer Tracy where it’s like, “I’m going to walk out, I’m going to look down at my mark. And that’s when I start the scene.” I was curious where you guys feel like you meet as artists?
Clooney: Soderbergh used to talk about this with Ocean’s when we did it, which was that everyone was actively trying to hand the scene to the other person. And that was kind of a generosity of spirit, but also confidence that you don’t have to grab and hold onto everything. And when you do that, funnily enough, it all kind of—
Pitt: Yeah, when everyone wins, the thing wins. You win when the other wins. I remember the story, I don’t know if it’s a true story, but I remember hearing very early on from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid that they didn’t want Redford, they were hiring someone else—
Clooney: McQueen or somebody.
Pitt: And Redford ended up getting the part. And at some point it was clear that he was really jumping off-screen. He was leaving a mark. And that they had gone to Newman—this was Newman’s production, with George Roy Hill—and said: “We may want to back off on the close-ups. Because he’s really good.” And that Newman had said, “No, no, no. Let it play. Let it play.” And that kind of generosity, I actually think, is part of the reason both of them have left such an indelible mark and for so long.
Clooney: I also think about Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, her first starring role in a movie, in Roman Holiday, and it was “Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday.” And he saw the first cut of the movie and he called up the studio and said, “She’s going to win an Oscar for this fucking thing, and we’re going to look like assholes if it’s my name above the title and she’s ‘introducing,’ ” and they changed it. There’s the ability and the confidence to not feel like somebody’s stepping on or taking away.
Have you guys figured out who is Redford and who is Newman?
Pitt: No, man. We’re George and Brad.
Clooney: We don’t want to be compared to those two guys. They’re icons.
I have a slightly rude question, which is: Are you guys actually friends?
Clooney: It’s a very good question. After the restraining order that I took out…
Pitt: Which was really, I had already had one against him—it’s kind of redundant. Unnecessary. This is why we’re sitting six feet apart now.
Clooney: Yeah, man, we’re friends. We’ve been friends for a long time. And it’s fun because we also check in on each other every once in a while, which is an important part of this. Things get complicated in life and you always have to make sure everybody’s okay.
Pitt: George is probably the best at understanding, seeing the chessboard and the potential moves. I’ll call George on numerous occasions when things get bumpy.
What are the logistics? Do you guys text?
Clooney: I was doing Ticket to Paradise with Jules [a.k.a. Julia Roberts] and we were in a helicopter and we would text Brad—
Pitt: I would get photos of them with the dumbest looks on their faces at each location you moved to. I didn’t even want ’em. Listen, there’s been wonderful experiences from the job and there’s also been really heavy pressures. I once equated celebrity to—one, you’re being hunted.
The gazelle thing.
Pitt: The gazelle thing, just being cut off from the herd. George is going to understand something that no one else is going to understand, that we don’t even have to speak about. There’s a comfort in that. There’s another smaller tribe that erupts from that because of the pressures and the struggles that one will have in their own life. When this thing came up I thought, Ah man, I’ve known this guy since the ’90s and been through so much life at this point and so many twists and curves and turns and there’s something just, I don’t know, I felt there was something really lovely just that we could do something shoulder to shoulder.
I always thought the gazelle metaphor that you like to use about fame—you are split off from the pack, and you’re being hunted—
Pitt: You watch those nature documentaries. There’s that one gazelle that gets caught off. And then the lions and then the cheetahs are chasing him. And then afterward if they escape, they go through the trauma, the shakes.…
I always found that metaphor to be a lonely one.
Pitt: Not just lonely. Scary. It can be scary until you find your footing through the field, I guess. But that’s why there’s a real comfort. I know he’s got my back. I got his back.
Clooney: But also, I really understand how you get somewhere: hard work, it takes some skill at what you do…. And it requires a certain amount of just straight-up luck. It does. Now you can create some luck. There’s that Jack Nicklaus line [Ed note: This line is also often attributed to Gary Player or Arnold Palmer] where he made the long putt and the guy says: “Lucky putt.” And he goes, “Well, funny, the longer I practice, the luckier I get.” You can create that luck. But you still need luck. And once you get through that—staying power requires diligence. It’s like an Olympic athlete. And I don’t understate that. The people who survive—you look at how many people do one dumb thing in their career and it really chokes them down for a long period of time—
Pitt: And then there’s someone like me, who can do four or five dumb things, and just keep going.
Clooney: [Laughs.] No, but it requires a fortitude. Look, it’s fun to look around—I look at him, and I also see the kid with really shitty hair on a bad sitcom that both of us were—
Pitt: I would say one of the greatest mullets that ever existed.
Clooney: Was my mullet or your mullet?
Pitt: I’m going to say mine.
Clooney: Yeah, I might say mine. But again, that’s part of a really good shared experience, because that was part of making it.
George, in the Ocean’s days, you would often say that Brad had it worse in terms of the fame stuff.
Clooney: What I used to do is chum the water with him. I’d go out to his hotel room in Amsterdam, there’d be 500 people there, all night. And I’d go to his hotel room and open the door and come out and go, “Hey, everybody!” And then walk back in. So they just bugged him all night. But we’d go to the airport, remember?
Pitt: Yeah.
Clooney: And I’d walk out and they’d be like, “George Clooney!” And I go, “Brad Pitt.” And they go, “Oh!” And they all run after him.
Pitt: I just remember one time going, “Guys, I’ll take the bullet on this one. You guys sit this one out.” And I go and it’s [Pitt mimes chaos] and you guys get to slip through.
Clooney: A lot of people—even who reach a fairly high level of fame—find a way to be able to kind of live a normal life, walk around the streets of New York without being followed and stuff like that. And there’s, I dunno, five or six of us where it’s just never subsided. And there’s never been that like, “Hey, let’s take a walk through Central Park and not get hammered.” It just hasn’t happened yet. It will, obviously. But it hasn’t happened yet. So I have a goal of trying to protect, I don’t want pictures of my kids. We deal in very serious subject matters, with very serious bad guys, and we don’t want to have photos of our kids out there. So we have to work hard at trying to stay private, and it’s tricky, as you can imagine. There’s times you will avoid going to the hospital with something that you would normally go to the hospital for, because—
Pitt: It’s a headline. “I’ll just, I’ll heal up this knife wound.”
That’s a wild thing to say!
Pitt: It’s true.
Clooney: It’s absolutely true. You will assess how bad something is before you go.
Pitt: Compound fracture, stick it back in.
What did you guys make of each other when you first met?
Pitt: When George first stood out to me is really when Princess Diana died in the crash, and George got up to speak about it. The hunt? I can’t tell you, I can’t describe it to anyone. It was insane. You would have nine cars following you. They’re waiting for you.
Clooney: We’ve been in Paris in those same chases.
Pitt: Oh my God. And you stop at a stoplight and they all get out and it’s flash-flash-flash-flash-flash-flash. And you can’t see anything, and you can’t move because you’re trapped between cars at a stoplight. It’s a horrible feeling. It’s really invasive to know people are out there and they’re hiding in the bushes. It’s really a shitty, shitty feeling. And so George got up and commented on that after Princess Diana. And that’s when I saw: This guy’s got something that the rest of us don’t. Like, I saw the leader in that moment.
Clooney: The funny part is that I was one of the last people in the running for Thelma & Louise. And then when he got it—I knew it was going to be a big film, but I didn’t know it was going to be like that. And his career was like this [Clooney mimes something going way up] and I’m still doing some bad TV show or something. I wouldn’t watch Thelma & Louise for a couple of years.
Pitt: Don’t forget, we’re also competitive motherfuckers. We are. I mean, all of us. Damon. All of us.
Clooney: I want to beat you at any job. But if I don’t get it, I would like you to get it.
Were you guys competing for the same roles in the ’90s? Or now, for that matter?
Pitt: It didn’t really work that way. Not even then.
Clooney: There’s a very interesting thing that happens when you’ve been working together a long time where, I don’t have to be looking even near him to know what he’s doing and have some idea of what’s going on. And there’s a great ease to that and confidence where you just go, “Oh yeah, I know what he’s going to do.” And by the way, there are plenty of scenes in Wolfs in particular where you could feel one of us teeing it up for the other guy. So it’s not competitive anymore.
“Anymore.”
Pitt: I’m just saying we have a competitive nature. Like the competitiveness that an athlete would have. And I see that in most of the guys that are around. You take pride in what you do, you want it to really, really work. But at the same time, if I didn’t have a George Clooney in my life, I don’t know that I would’ve reached certain levels. Because it inspires you to push on.
Clooney: Think about it this way. We both have production companies, and both of us have produced a movie that’s won best picture. If I had a movie we were producing up against him, I’d do everything I could to undercut his ass. But I remember when he won for the film he did with Quentin, when he won the Oscar, and I wrote him and I said, “I’m really happy to be in a world where you’ve got an Oscar for the work you do as an actor.” Because there’s a really easy route, when you’re Brad, to do really big commercial films, make a shitload of money, and live a really easy life. And his choices as an actor were always—like Seven. Seven’s not a home run. When you see Seven, you read the script, you go, that’s a commercial film? I don’t think so. And he made it a commercial film because he stuck to his guns.
Pitt: Well—Fincher. But that’s part of it too. People you attach yourself to, the people you work with.
This is why I asked about competition. I’m just sitting here on the sidelines. But in my head I’m like, all right, David Fincher: That’s Brad’s guy. But then I’m looking at the Coen brothers, they cast you more, George. Tarantino—Brad.
Pitt: [Pointing to Clooney.] Soderbergh.
Exactly. We’re talking about the great directors of your generation, and some of them gravitate toward you, George, and some of them gravitate toward you, Brad. But just from a competitive standpoint, for instance, if I were you, George, I’d be like: “Quentin, I’m right here.”
Clooney: Listen, I did a movie with Quentin. He played my brother.
In From Dusk Till Dawn, yeah.
Pitt: Oh, that’s right. He was pretty good in it too.
Clooney: He was okay in it.
Pitt: There’s a scene, I’m blanking on it. But he’s really good.
Clooney: Quentin said some shit about me recently, so I’m a little irritated by him. 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.”
Pitt: Heh heh heh heh heh.
Clooney: So now I’m like, all right, dude, fuck off. I don’t mind giving him shit. He gave me shit. But no, look, we’re really lucky we got to work with these great directors. Director and screenplay is what keeps you alive. And I learned that after doing some really bad films. You can’t make a good film out of a bad script. You can’t do it. You can make a bad film out of a good script. You can fuck it up.
Brad, last time you and I talked, you were thinking a lot about what it means to be a man, to be a father, and you’ve been pretty out front about your time in an all-male AA group in Los Angeles—
Pitt: Yeah, that was really cool. But you know they came down on me for that? AA did. They were like, “It’s anonymous.” I was like, “Well yeah, but if I want to—”
Clooney: Really? You got shit for that?
Pitt: I’m not outing anyone. Everyone knows you exist. What’s the issue?
And George, last time you and I met, we talked about the fact that you are, more or less, constantly in pain from this injury you sustained on the set of Syriana—
Clooney: Less now.
Pitt: There was a time he couldn’t go out with us on, was it Ocean’s Twelve? We were on a big European tour. Yeah, he was suffering.
Clooney: I canceled on the tarmac.
Pitt: Came on the bus, though. This is him—his spine is leaking fluid. He’s got these incessant migraines. And we were supposed to get on a plane. We were heading out to do the whole European tour. And you’ve got to understand, we all rely on George. George leads. He still, in all this pain, had to get on the bus with us, and tell us, and explain to us, and give us a speech.
Clooney: “Go get ’em, guys!” And then I went to the hospital.
The thing that George said to me when we last spoke, and forgive me if I get this wrong, but you talked to a pain guy and he said: “You try to reset your pain threshold. Because a lot of times what happens with pain is you’re constantly mourning for how it used to feel.”
Clooney: When I first did it, they gave me a tub of Vicodin. I was like, “This is insanity.” They just hand you a tub of Vicodin. And I was like, “I can’t do it this way.” And so I ended up with this pain-management guy and he basically said, “If you were born feeling the way you feel right now, you wouldn’t know you were in pain. You would think that this is how you’re supposed to feel. So adjust how you think of pain.” And it changed—first of all, it got me off of having to take all that Vicodin. But it actually is good with other things in life too.
Anyway, this is a long-winded way of asking, do you feel like you’ve evolved as—
Clooney: Humans? What do you think?
Pitt: Yeah, I don’t know. Man, I would hope so. Jesus Christ. Just go jump if you haven’t. Isn’t that the game?
For some people, sure. For other people…no.
Pitt: Really? I think that’s the game. You find more peace. More comfort in your skin. Find more love in the world. Amongst all the insanity.
Are there things you know about yourself now that you would tell your younger self if you could?
Pitt: It’s going to be all right. That’s it. It’s relative, all right, that phrase all right. But it’s going to be all right.
Clooney: My aunt [Rosemary Clooney] was a really famous singer, and then she wasn’t. And she wasn’t, not because she became less talented, but she wasn’t because times changed, and rock and roll came in, and pop music and women singers were out. And so I got a really good lesson in how little so much of this has to do with you. And the older you get, the more you’re able to look at it and go, well, it’s not my brilliance that made this thing a hit and it’s not my stupidity that made this one flop. There’s all these elements and you’re able to be a little more reflective. You take less credit for the good, and you take less credit for the bad.
Do you think you’re still discovering things about yourself through your work?
Clooney: There’s a narrative that people love to do with me, which is like, I’m always just playing a version of me. And I always go, “Well, all right, but I don’t know that many people are doing O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Michael Clayton.” 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? 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.
Brad, are there still things about yourself that you’re trying out or exploring or interested in trying to discover through acting?
Pitt: I come back to time allocation. I’m looking for a new experience. Something like driving these cars. It’s just experiencing downforce and carbon brakes. It’s just like, wow, wow. In what world would I get to do this?
Clooney: Carbon brakes!
Pitt: Man, they do not work until you get 300 degrees. They do not work. They will not stop. And then you get ’em at speed, they’ll go up to 900 degrees, I think. You get ’em in that spot and you can be barreling flat out at a brick wall and at the 50-yard marker, slam on these things, and they bring you to a stop down to 40 miles an hour. It’s an incredible experience. So I think for me it’s really more, I’ve always thought this was a younger person’s game, so to speak. And what we contribute now, I don’t know how much it will still land. But I’m just looking for experience. And then the people I work with, that’s it. I just want to work with—
Clooney: People who like what they do. Like, you were talking about time allotment. The older you get, time allotment is very different. Five months out of your life is a lot. And so it’s not just like, “Oh, I’m going to go do a really good film, like Three Kings, and I’m going to have a miserable fuck like David O. Russell making my life hell. Making every person on the crew’s life hell.” It’s not worth it. Not at this point in my life. Just to have a good product.
Pitt: It’s also not worth it, really, to repeat ourselves. It’s just boring as fuck.
Does that mean that now the bar for working is higher? Or is it more: This is in my DNA and I don’t know how to do anything else?
Pitt: No, we’re both doing a lot of things outside film, which is really intriguing.
Clooney: I wrote a Broadway play, Good Night, and Good Luck. I’m going to be on Broadway. Look, that’s going to be six months of my life in New York. But again, it’s like we’re talking about time allotment. I won’t do another thing. I’m going to give myself time with my kids. I really enjoy driving them to school, and my wife and I are having a really wonderful time. So I don’t want to lose all of that. But this is an opportunity to do something that I have never done before. I’ve never been on Broadway. So we’re still trying to do things and new things and try things, but we’re also saying, “Well, let’s also remember that we want to see our life in a kind of nice way too.” A little of both. Everything in moderation, including moderation.
Pitt: Heh heh heh heh heh.
Do you agree with that, Brad?
Pitt: Yeah. [Long, philosophical pause.] Yeah.
Zach Baron is GQ’s senior special projects editor.
A version of this story originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of GQ with the title “In the South of France With George & Brad”
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