George Clooney lived up to his reputation as one of Hollywood's most charming leading men when he took to Reddit on Tuesday, Jan. 28, to participate in an AMA in promotion of his new movie The Monuments Men and his latest humanitarian effort, the Satellite Sentinel Project. After literally hanging from a wire on the set of Tomorrowland, he treated fans to stories about some of his many A-list pals, including Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock.
Us Weekly read through the entire Q&A and picked out six choice quotes from the Gravity star. Among the highlights? His thoughts on the infamous Batman nipples, his reaction to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's Golden Globes joke at his expense, and a story about how a prop from Solaris caused a commotion with TSA.
On Bullock, his costar in Gravity and a longtime friend: "It's tricky cause Sandy drinks so much that oftentimes it's just hard to keep her upright. No, you know, Sandy and I have known each other for over 20 years and we both were struggling actors when we first met. She was dating a friend of mine at the time who's still a good friend of ours. Every time we're together it's funny. She's somebody I adore, really, she's just fun to be in a room with. I'm sure people will assume people aren't quite who they appear to be onscreen — they're shorter or taller or meaner or dumber — but Sandy is exactly what she appears onscreen, an incredibly charming woman who's really just fun to hang out with. Very smart and centered, even though she does drink a lot."
On playing Batman and embarrassing himself in public: "Well, I wasn't thrilled with the nipples on the batsuit. You know, that's not something you really think about when you're putting it on. You figure all batsuits have nipples and then you realize yours was really the first. Batman was just constantly cold, I guess. But I have plenty of other things that I'm really obviously embarrassed about, too. Oftentimes it'll be stumbling out of a bar drunk or something dumb like that, but as you get older a major goal in life is to try to do less and less embarrassing things. You know, try not to face plant publicly as often as possible."
On being the butt of a joke at awards ceremonies: "Usually it's pretty funny. You know I got really good by Tina and Amy the other day and I'm working on getting them back in a big way…Shows like that are designed to have fun with you without being devastatingly unkind. I've been the target of a couple of stupid jokes that didn't work, but in general I've only seen a couple that were really vicious toward people…"
On Brad Pitt's best prank: "We were shooting Ocean's 12 in my hometown in Lake Como, and he had a flier sent around saying George only wants to be called by his character's name Danny Ocean, don't look him in the eyes. It got into the local paper. As you know, jokes don't translate at all, and they called me il divo, and said that I was treating the crew like s–t. When it got into the paper I came downstairs and Brad had the paper in his hand, and I said, 'You're mine from here on out.' Brad just said, 'Please don't harm my children.' Yeah, he's done some pretty rotten things."
On beating Leonardo DiCaprio in basketball: "It's true. That was a fun day. It's always fun when you play people younger than you and win. We're playing a bunch of six-year-olds tomorrow."
On stealing props from set: "Every once in a while I get some fun ones. I remember I got this insane-looking prop from this movie Solaris. It was the size of a lunchbox and it had all these intricate lights and tubes, and I snuck it into Richard Kind's carry-on bag. They ran it through the machine and pulled it off and asked, 'What is this? Did you pack your own bag?' He had no idea what to say. Of course this was pre-9/11. If you did that now it would be a very horrible thing, but it was very funny at the time. Anyway, don't do that at home."
