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George Clooney and Julia Roberts loved pretending to hate each other in 'Ticket to Paradise'

Julia Roberts and George Clooney have been good friends for 22 years — ever since meeting to work on 2001’s heist team-up remake Ocean’s 11.

They’ve made five movies together since, but there’s something particularly saucy about their latest, Ticket to Paradise, in which they play a bitterly divorced couple hellbent on preventing their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) from marrying an Indonesian seaweed farmer (Maxime Bouttier) she’s only recently met: They got to pretend to hate each other for the better part of its four-month shoot.

“George has been waiting to get some things off his chest,” Roberts tells us in a joint interview with her co-star (watch above). “I could see him kind of licking his chops before a scene. Like, ‘This is gonna be fun.’”

“Yeah, I'm still waiting,” counters Clooney. “To really get them off.”

That banter is par-for-the-course when you get these two famed actors in the same room. “They have a snarky relationship in real life,” confirms director Ol Parker.

US actress Julia Roberts (L) and US actor George Clooney arrive for the premiere of
Julia Roberts and George Clooney arrive for the premiere of Ticket to Paradise at the Regency Village Theatre in Westwood, Calif., on Oct. 17, 2022. (Photo: Michael Tran / AFP)

What’s exciting for many fans, though, is the general vibe of Ticket to Paradise. It feels like a throwback to many of Roberts’s biggest hits like My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), Notting Hill (1999) and Runaway Bride (1999) — the type of star-studded romantic comedy they don’t make too many of these days.

Roberts made headlines recently for saying big-studio rom-coms have long been undervalued in pop culture.

“I love these kinds of movies and I think that they're really hard to make,” she tells us. “And so having made a lot of different types of movies in my career, I appreciate the delicacy of constructing a story like this.”

Asked what his most under-appreciated movie is, the always self-deprecating Clooney launched into a response mocking two of his most infamous credits — his early career horror stint in Return of the Killer Tomatoes! (1988) and his oft-mocked turn as the nipple-suited dark knight in Batman & Robin (1997).

“On Rotten Tomatoes, I have two films that are considered the worst films ever made,” the two-time Oscar winner cracks.

“Isn’t that great? I mean, honestly, I’m proud of it.”

— Video produced by Jen Kucsak and edited by Leese Katsnelson

Ticket to Paradise opens Friday.

Watch the trailer: