George Clooney may be known first and foremost as one of Hollywood’s great non-pigeonholed actors, but he also has a side gig still going pranking A-listers. Matt Damon has been one of his many targets over the years, like when Clooney and Brad Pitt campaigned for Damon to be Sexist Man Alive by taking out full page ads of him in a Speedo. That’s a top-notch prank for sure, but the Bourne franchise lead recently revealed another doozy that the former Batman actor played on him.
As part of a Variety profile about George Clooney, Matt Damon shared how when the two were working together on 2014’s The Monuments Men, which Clooney also directed, he arranged for the movie’s wardrobe department to take in the waist of Damon’s costumes by an eighth of an inch every day. As Damon recalled:
I was in my early 40s at the time, and worried about going to seed. He just delighted in messing with me. Long after that happened, I came home from making another movie and put on a suit that was too tight. My first thought was that George had gotten into my closet.
Talk about playing the long game. Rather than have the wardrobe department immediately put Matt Damon into a costume that was too tight, George Clooney decided to go at this prank more slowly and have the costume’s size slowly decreased. It’s exceptionally twisted and stretched long after The Monuments Men finished filming. I admire Clooney for hatching this in the midst of directing the ensemble that also starred Bill Murray, John Goodman and Cate Blanchett, among others.
I’d argue the Sexist Man Alive prank ranks higher on the list of pranks George Clooney has played on Matt Damon since it was so public, but this wardrobe resizing is still amazing. However, let’s also not forget the time that Clooney looped in Damon when he targeted Tina Fey and Amy Poehler after they joked about the two men when hosting the 2014 Golden Globes. He hilariously had stationary made with Matt Damon’s name and penned a letter where he pretended to be the Good Will Hunting actor and said he was upset by the jokes. Even better, Clooney didn’t tell Damon he was doing this. This is my favorite prank of the three I’ve brought up.
But as I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of other Hollywood talents George Clooney has pranked. His prank war with Brad Pitt is especially iconic, which was ignited when he stuck a pot bumper sticker on Pitt’s car during the filming of Ocean’s Eleven. Matt Damon also revealed a few years back that the way Clooney screwed with Pitt during Ocean’s Twelve’s production left the Se7en actor “the maddest I’ve ever seen.”
With George Clooney expected to reunite with both Brad Pitt and Matt Damon on Ocean’s Fourteen, I can’t wait to hear about the prank hijinks that ensue on that set. In the meantime, Clooney’s most recent movie, Jay Kelly, and Damon’s movie arriving later this month, The Rip (which just dropped a new trailer), can both be accessed with a Netflix subscription.
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