George Clooney is the latest Hollywood star to defend actor Paul Dano after director Quentin Tarantino’s comments. The Oscar winner took the stage on Saturday to accept an award for his performance in Noah Baumbach’s Netflix film Jay Kelly at AARP’s Movies for Grownups Awards and used the time to shout out The Fabelmans star, as well as other actors.

“Jay Kelly is a film about and made by people who love actors," Clooney said. “It's an important part of this … you know, people throughout this room and people I've known most of my life, actually, and most of them are actors, and I have a great affinity. I don't enjoy watching people be cruel to actors. Paul Dano and Owen Wilson and Matthew Lillard, I would be honored to work with those actors. Honored.”

Clooney, who previously costarred with Tarantino in Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 film From Dusk till Dawn, added, “We're living in a time of cruelty; we don't need to be adding to it.”

What did Quentin Tarantino say about Paul Dano? 

The comments come more than a month after Tarantino, known for helming films like Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, appeared on author Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast, where he slammed Dano’s performance in the 2007 film There Will Be Blood. In the interview, he praised the film, for which Daniel Day-Lewis took home the Best Actor Oscar, but told Ellis it would rank higher for him if it didn’t have “a big giant flaw in it” — that flaw being Dano.

“[Dano] is weak sauce, man. He is the weak sister. [Daniel] is eating him [alive]. Austin Butler would have been wonderful in that role. He’s just such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy,” Tarantino said. “Daniel Day-Lewis shows that he doesn’t need a strong foil. The movie needs it. He doesn’t need anything.”

When Ellis suggested that Day-Lewis’s role may have needed the type of performance opposite him, Tarantino responded with, “You put him with the weakest f***ing actor in SAG? The limpest d*** in the world?”

Tarantino also stated that he “didn’t care for” actors Owen Wilson and Matthew Lillard, either.

The backlash to Tarantino’s comments 

Tarantino’s comments were met with swift backlash, with Lillard himself telling the crowd at GalaxyCon in December that his feelings were hurt by the mention. Many fans also criticized Tarantino for coming after such beloved stars, particularly since his comments were completely unprompted.

And though Dano has not spoken about the comments directly, many of his Hollywood peers have defended the actor specifically. After beginning his movie career in 2001 with L.I.E. and breaking out in 2006 with his role in Little Miss Sunshine, Dano has received widespread critical acclaim over the years for his performances in films like The Power of the Dog, Love and Mercy, Prisoners, Swiss Army Man and Ruby Sparks.

The Batman director Matt Reeves took to X to write that the star, who played the Riddler in the movie, is an “incredible actor and an incredible person.”

Mattson Tomlin, who wrote The Batman 2, out in 2027, wrote in his own post on X, “I am really pleased to see so many people cheer on Paul Dano this week. Not only is he a terrific actor, but he's an astonishing director who exudes control and tremendous empathy. Check out WILDLIFE if you haven't seen it.”

And other actors also shared their own pro-Dano opinions, with Simu Liu writing on X, “idk man i think paul dano is an incredible actor.” Stranger Things alum Dacre Montgomery also recently told Yahoo, “Contrary to Quentin Tarantino, I’d love to work with Paul Dano.” And Ben Stiller shared on X that “Paul Dano is f-ing brilliant.”