The 2014 co-star who called John Goodman a c*nt: “He doesn’t know this”
Many words have been used to describe John Goodman over the years, and almost all of them are positive. In fact, the person most likely to describe the actor in a negative light is Goodman himself. Well, apart from the time one of his co-stars called him a cunt.
As one of the most respected character actors of his generation and modern cinema in general, the Goodman fan club extends far and wide across the industry. As mentioned, though, you’d never catch Goodman patting himself on the back for his achievements, something he’s never been able to do.
Most performers with a similar body of work or as much awards season recognition, although he remains one of the best ever to have never even been nominated for an Academy Award, would be comfortably able to celebrate the high points of their professional life, but it’s always been a struggle for the Coen brothers regular.
He can watch The Big Lebowski without descending into a pit of self-critical despair, and that’s about it. Almost everything else carries some degree of shame, regret, or sense of missed opportunity, which is ridiculous when you think about it, considering he’s made a career out of frequently being the best thing about the movies and TV shows he’s appeared in.
Things were looking bleak for a while in the early 2010s, with Goodman admitting that he was starting to think the industry was leaving him behind, before being rejuvenated by a supporting role in the five-time Academy Award winner, The Artist. Suddenly, he felt like he was back on track, and several years later, he got the chance to reunite with that film’s Oscar-winning leading man, Jean Dujardin.
The stacked 2014 war flick, The Monuments Men, co-written and directed by George Clooney, who also co-starred alongside Goodman, Dujardin, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, and more, continued the Frenchman’s post-Oscars winning streak in Hollywood, after he made his American feature debut in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.
However, when promoting the flick, Dujardin painted a less than savoury picture of his two-time colleague. When reflecting on how it felt to be reunited, he described Goodman in less than flattering terms. “It’s great to be shooting together again,” he said. “What he doesn’t know is that he’s a cunt. He’s a cunt in France, John. He doesn’t know this, but prepare yourself.”
It seems a little harsh to call an actor who’s struggled with self-loathing for their entire life a cunt, but at least Goodman took it in his stride. Knowing how he’s developed a habit for tearing himself down at every opportunity, he’d have probably wholeheartedly agreed, even if Dujardin’s tongue was planted in his cheek when he unleashed his unexpected verbal tirade.
They made two movies together within the space of a couple of years and haven’t worked together since, but that’s probably not because Dujardin called Goodman a cunt, with the former having kept American cinema at arm’s length since The Monuments Men.
