The one director George Clooney swore he’d never work with again: “A miserable fuck”
One of the least controversial leading men in Hollywood, George Clooney is handsome in a very egalitarian way, such that everyone can acknowledge that his features are well-proportioned and his screen presence charismatic, and even when he weighed in on the 2024 presidential election, tipping the scales in favour of Joe Biden stepping aside, he seemed to annoy everyone equally, which is its own form of egalitarianism.
So, when this master of Hollywood ease uses language like “miserable fuck” to describe a colleague, it’s worth pricking up your ears.
Mr Clooney seems like a difficult man to rile, and anyone who can do so (publicly, no less) must truly be a person of rare talent, so while he’s worked with such illustrious directors as Steven Soderbergh, Alexander Payne, the Coen brothers, and Alfonso Cuarón, only one filmmaker has earned his everlasting ire.
In 1999, the Batman and Robin actor starred in the David O Russell film Three Kings, about three US soldiers in Iraq who start hunting for gold that is supposedly stashed near their base. It was a critical and commercial success, and marked a major moment in Russell’s career from indie darling to future box office shoo-in, but behind the scenes, things were much more complicated.
It’s not clear when tensions began to flare between the director and the star; Clooney had certainly worked hard to get himself in the picture to begin with, as Russell had originally envisioned Clint Eastwood in the part of Major Archie Gates, but had reworked it to accommodate Nicolas Cage. On the other hand, Clooney, who was still starring in ER at the time, begged Russell to pick him instead, and when Cage became unavailable, he got his wish, for better or for worse.
The primary point of contention was Russell’s tyrannical behaviour, which has been well documented throughout his career, and so the set of Three Kings involved lots of shouting and, at one point, a physical altercation with Clooney for allegedly assaulting an extra. Lily Tomlin has already accounted for the director’s sadistic behaviour on the set of I Heart Huckabees, and he was reportedly so cruel to Amy Adams (how can anyone be cruel to Amy Adams?) during the production of American Hustle that she described being “devastated” throughout the process.
Clooney is the first to admit that Russell makes excellent movies, but he is also pretty unstinting in his criticism, noting in a 2005 interview, “Will I work with David ever again? Absolutely not. Never. Do I think he’s tremendously talented, and do I think he should be nominated for Oscars? Yeah”.
The two have supposedly mended their relationship in the decades since, but the star still has absolutely zero intention of a future collaboration, where, in a 2024 interview with GQ, he blamed his age, saying that he’s a lot pickier about where he chooses to allot his time now that he’s in his 60s.
“Five months out of your life is a lot,” he said, “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’. It’s not worth it,” he concluded, just for the sake of producing a good product, but there many actors who have worked with Russell who would agree with the sentiment, regardless of their age.
