George Clooney’s emotional speech about Princess Diana’s death started his friendship with Brad Pitt

Step aside, Ben Affleck And Matt Damon: Another top Hollywood actor couple is taking center stage in the latest edition of GQ Magazine. While discussing Apple’s upcoming action comedy Wolf, George Clooney And Brad Pitt reflect on the origins of their decades-long friendship.

“We’ve been friends for a long time,” Clooney told the publication. “And it’s fun because we check in with each other every now and then, which is a big part of it. Things get complicated in life and you always have to make sure everyone’s okay.”

Pitt and Clooney have starred together in films such as Eleven Pirates and its two sequels, as well as the 2008 Coen brothers comedy Burn after reading. But their on-screen relationship extended off-screen, too. “I would call George a lot when things got rough,” Pitt said, explaining that as another global celebrity, “George would understand something that no one else would understand, something we didn’t even have to talk about. There was a comfort in that. There was a smaller tribe that erupted from there because of the pressures and struggles that a person would go through in their own life.”

Speaking of the dark side of fame: Clooney’s passionate 1997 speech after The Death of Princess Diana That was what initially drew Pitt to him. “The first time George really stood out to me was when Princess Diana died in the accident, and George stood up to talk about it,” Pitt said. GQ Magazine.

At the time, Clooney spoke to a group of reporters at the Screen Actors Guild offices in Los Angeles—and criticized the press for its role in Diana’s death. “Princess Di is dead, and who are we going to talk to about that? The chauffeur? The paparazzi? Or the magazines and newspapers that bought these pictures and turned the photographers into bounty hunters?” he said. “If you don’t hide behind journalism, you’re an accessory to a crime, and you’re going to jail.”

More than 20 years later, Clooney is doing the same. protected Meghan Markle against media scrutiny. “She is a woman who is seven months pregnant and she is being pursued and vilified and pursued in the same way that Diana was, and history is repeating itself,” he said in 2019. “And we saw how that ended.”

In their family GQ Magazine In the cover story, Clooney said that he and Pitt were “in Paris in the same chases” that Diana endured. “It was a terrible feeling,” Pitt said. “It was really invasive to know that there were people out there and they were hiding in the bushes. It was a really bad, bad feeling,” he continued. “And so George got up and commented on it after Princess Diana. And that’s when I saw: This guy has something that the rest of us don’t have. Like, I saw the leader in that moment.”