George Clooney Will Be Honored With Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival Amid Debate Over His “Movie Star” Status

George Clooney will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival. He has now fully transformed into Jay Kelly.

“I’ve had so many extraordinary moments in Venice,” Clooney said in a statement. “This festival is without question my favorite, and to be given the Golden Lion is a tremendous honor. It also probably means I’m old, but I’ll take it.”

Clooney recently admitted being left puzzled—and irked—by Quentin Tarantino’s comments about how he’s no longer a big movie star.

“It’s been a long while since George Clooney has drawn anybody to an audience. When was his last hit where he drew an audience?” QT declared in 2019.

The Telegraph’s chief film critic Tim Robey agreed with Tarantino. In a write-up, he says Clooney’s last 20 years “have not done a great deal to sustain the stardom.” His last leading role was in the moderately successful, entirely bland “Ticket to Paradise” (2022).

Clooney, whose tequila business has reportedly brought in over $500 million, has not acted in three of his last four films: “Suburbicon” (2017), “The Tender Bar” (2021), and “The Boys in the Boat” (2023). Instead, he’s essentially gone out of his way to avoid delving too much into the craft of acting; he is now more interested in directing.

Sure, Clooney was once a “movie star,” but that was a long time ago, and he’s really only had three major box office hits in a 40-year time span: “Ocean’s Eleven,” “Gravity,” and “The Perfect Storm.” His best work could actually be found in non-blockbusters “Out of Sight,” “Burn After Reading,” “Three Kings,” “Michael Clayton,” “Up in the Air,” “The Descendants,” and “Solaris.”

Clooney turned to directing with 2002’s “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” then came his acclaimed Oscar-nominated “Good Night, and Good Luck,” a surprisingly thoughtful treatise on journalism. The only other film I liked from auteur Clooney was “The Ides of March” (2011). Since then, he’s struck out with five consecutive films—“The Monuments Men,” “Suburbicon,” “The Midnight Sky,” “The Tender Bar,” and “The Boys in the Boat.”