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He’s the most admired and desired man in Hollywood - but George Clooney is deeply hurt by bad reviews, the latest tranche of leaked Sony emails revealed yesterday.
The recently-married actor was so appalled by the critical reaction to his Second World War film The Monuments Men earlier this year that he wrote to Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal saying he needed “protection from all the reviews”.
In an email sent on January 29 with the subject line “it’s getting worse”, Clooney wrote: “Let’s just make it a hit. I haven’t slept in 30 hours. And it’s 7 am.”
The Independent’s review of The Monuments Men, which Clooney also directed and co-wrote, described it as a “profoundly frustrating and unsatisfying film”. It has an average score of just 31 per cent on the influential Rotten Tomatoes review aggregation website.
The Clooney emails are the latest embarrassing revelation to emerge from the cache of emails stolen from Sony in a mass cyber-attack with suspected links to North Korea. The attack is thought to have been staged in revenge for Sony’s production of the soon-to-be released The Interview - a comedy about a CIA plot to kill Kim Jong-un.
In pictures: George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin's wedding
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Separately, it emerged that Sony executives jokingly warned staff about casting Will Smith or his children in any more films after the publication of bizarre interview with 14-year-old Willow Smith and 16-year-old Jaden Smith in November in which they revealed they had been home schooled.
An email dated November 18 apparently sent to Pascal by Tom Rothman of Sony venture TriStar contained a link to the article with two clear instructions. “1. Read this. 2. they r home schooled: don’t let this family date your movies!!!
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