George Clooney Recalls Pranking Tom Cruise by Posing As Brad Pitt

George Clooney isn’t afraid to get up to mischief – even when it’s at his A-list friends’ expense.

The actor, 63, confessed during the Tuesday, September 17, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! that he’s pranked everyone from Tom Cruise to Meryl Streep over the years.

During the appearance, Clooney recalled that Kimmel, 56, once gifted him fake stationary which purported to be from Bill Clinton and Brad Pitt, respectively. Clooney explained that he’d been using the paper to fool friends, writing letters and pretending they were from Clinton and Pitt.

“Every actor I know I’ve sent a letter from Bill Clinton,” Clooney confessed. “I try to find their worst film and I tell them, ‘So I was on the plane and [watching your movie].’”

While posing as the former President was one thing, Clooney noted that the Brad Pitt stationary was especially “brutal,” recalling one prank that involved Pitt and Cruise.

Clooney confessed to tricking Cruise into believing Pitt was angling to make a sequel to their 1994 movie, Interview with the Vampire. In a further funny twist, Clooney, writing as Pitt, added that he wanted to take over the character Cruise portrayed, Lestat de Lioncourt. (Pitt, for his part, portrayed vampire Louis de Point du Lac.)

“I sent it to Tom Cruise, saying they want to do [Interview with the Vampire 2], but this time Brad wants to play Lestat,” Clooney said with a grin.

Kimmel then noted that Pitt had brought up the prank earlier that day, revealing that Cruise was more than willing to swap roles for another installment of the cult classic. “Brad this afternoon said that Tom called him and said, ‘Yeah, it’s cool, you can play Lestat, that’s fine, I’m OK with that,’ and he was like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Kimmel recalled, laughing.

Pitt and Cruise starred in the gothic horror film, which is based on Anne Rice’s 1976 novel of the same name, alongside Kristen Dunst.

Rice, who died in 2021 aged 80, initially, had wanted Pitt and Cruise to swap roles, claiming Cruise’s casting was “bizarre.” “I tried for a long time to tell them that they should just reverse these roles — have Brad Pitt play Lestat and have Tom Cruise play Louis. Of course, they don’t listen to me,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1993, saying Cruise was no more Lestat than “Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler.” (Rice eventually changed her opinion after seeing Cruise’s performance.)

Regardless of what character Pitt played, the actor was vocal about his disdain for the shooting process – meaning Cruise was likely more than a little surprised to hear the Oscar winner was willing to try a sequel.

“I am miserable. Six months in the f—ing dark…We get to London, and London was f—ing dark. London was dead of winter,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2011. “We’re shooting in Pinewood, which is an old institution… There’s no windows in there. It hasn’t been refabbed in decades. You leave for work in the dark — you go into this cauldron, this mausoleum — and then you come out and it’s dark. I’m telling you, one day it broke me.”

While speaking to Kimmel on Tuesday, Clooney confessed that not even Meryl Streep made it out unscathed when it came to the pranks, with Clooney sharing details of the fake letter he sent to her signed off from the pretend Pitt.

“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.’” he said.