George Clooney recently revealed that he is a fan of sending letters that appear to be written by other people — which is exactly how he pranked fellow actor Tom Cruise.
“Every actor I know I’ve sent a letter from Bill Clinton,” the actor, 63, said while on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Tuesday. “I try to find their worst film and I tell them, ‘So I was on the plane and [watching your movie].’”
“The Brad Pitt one was brutal. I sent it to Don Cheadle,” Clooney continued. “I sent it to Tom Cruise, saying they want to do [“Interview with the Vampire 2”], but this time Brad wants to play Lestat. And I sent it to Meryl Streep with a box of CDs for dialect and I said, ‘This guy helped me with my accent in “Troy” and I think it could really help you.’”
“Brad this afternoon said that Tom called him and said ‘Yeah, it’s cool, you can play Lestat, that’s fine, I’m okay with that,’ and he was like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Kimmel, 56, replied.
Cruise, 62, and Pitt, 60, starred in the 1994 classic “Interview with the Vampire” as two vampires living in the 18th and 19th centuries. The film also featured Kirsten Dunst and Christian Slater.
“I will say this — once you’ve done a really dastardly, long-running thing, it’s like having nuclear weapons,” Clooney told Kimmel. “Everyone’s so terrified that you can — you know this — somebody called Richard Kind and they wanted to do “Punk’d” or one of those dumba– shows, and they wanted to like punk me and they called all my friends and they were like ‘No! He could put a dead body in my apartment.’”
The “Wolfs” star shared whether his famous pals quickly catch on that the letters are from him.
“There’s usually some guess involved with me. Usually somehow they figure it out,” he said.
But this isn’t Clooney’s only prank on his peers in recent years.
The Oscar winner told the talk show host that he intentionally worked up his and Pitt’s “Wolf” director, Jon Watts, before the filmmaker pitched the action comedy to Pitt.
“I really made him go through the pitch with me, I made him work on it. ‘Tell me how you’re going to say it, don’t do that,’” Clooney reflected. “I really just scared the absolute s–t out of him before [he called Brad].”
“Wolfs” will be released in select theaters on Sept. 20 and airs on Apple TV+ starting Sept. 27.