George Clooney appears to be friends with everyone in Hollywood — but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a good ol' feud or two. Covering the December issue of Esquire, the Monuments Men star reveals that he had it out with another Oscar-winning hunk, Russell Crowe, after the Australian actor called him a "sellout" in an interview.
"The truth is that [Crowe] did send me a book of poems to apologize for insulting the sh** out of me, which he did," Clooney says. "He picked a fight with me. He started it for no reason at all. He put out this thing saying, George Clooney, Harrison Ford, and Robert De Niro are sellouts."
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Clooney continued: "And I put out a statement saying, 'He's probably right. And I'm glad he told us, 'cause Bob and Harrison and I were also thinking about starting a band, which would also fall under the heading of bad use of celebrity.'" Fiery-tempered Crowe, perhaps predictably, didn't drop it there, Clooney says.
"And that's when he really went off on me. 'Who the f*** does this guy think he is? He's a Frank Sinatra wannabe.' He really went after me. And so I sent him a note going, 'Dude . . . what the f*** is wrong with you?'
After Clooney had a particularly critically-acclaimed year, the pair were fated to meet again at the Golden Globes, so Crowe sent a peace offering.
"So he sends me a disc of his music and a thing of his poetry. I think he said, 'I was all misquoted,' and I was like, 'Yeah, yeah. Whatever.'
Clooney also has some critiques for Leonardo DiCaprio and his oversized posse of friends. Approaching DiCaprio, 39, about playing basketball sometime, Clooney recalls that DiCaprio bragged, "You know, we're pretty serious," he tells Esquire. "The thing about playing Leo is you have all these guys talking sh***. We get there, and there's this guy, Danny A I think his name is. Danny A is this club kid from New York. And he comes up to me and says, 'We played once at Chelsea Piers. I kicked your ass.'"
After Team Clooney roundly trounced team DiCaprio, Clooney observes that, perhaps, DiCaprio doesn't surround himself with the best people: "The discrepancy between their game and how they talked about their game made me think of how important it is to have someone in your life to tell you what’s what. I’m not sure if Leo has someone like that."
One more target? Twitter-loving Ashton Kutcher. "Why on God's green earth would you be in Twitter?" asks Clooney, whose ex-girlfriend Stacy Keibler is a huge proponent of the social media site. "I mean, when you see, like, Ashton Kutcher coming out and going, you know, Everybody leave Joe Paterno alone,' or whatever he said, you just go 'Fifteen minutes longer and a thought process and probably you wouldn't have done that.'"
