Clooney Steamed, Zellweger Evasive

By Stephen M. Silverman

Monday February 10, 2003 10:00 AM EST

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The Berlin Film Festival is in full swing, and George Clooney, for one, has come out swinging. Renée Zellweger is getting her zingers in, too.

At a press conference in the German capital for his film "Solaris," which tanked in the U.S., Clooney, 41, didn't take a comment by one Turkish journalist lightly -- responding with what Reuters termed a stream of invective.

In front of everybody, the journalist called the space movie "boring."

"I find you fascinating," Clooney snapped back at the guy. "You crack me up, man. You just wanted to get up and be a rat, you know that? You just wanted to get up and say something rotten. What a jerk! I mean honestly, you know, what a (expletive) thing to say!"

Not that Clooney was at a loss for words. "You make a lot of films, do you?" Clooney rhetorically asked the journalist. "You make a lot of films yourself? Yeah, I'd like to see you make a film first before you get to talk about it. What a jerk!"

Also at the fest, according to the BBC, Zellweger, 33, faced the press and dismissed stories that she has agreed to star in the movie sequel to "Bridget Jones's Diary." (The star, now in "Chicago," received a 2001 Best Actress Oscar nomination for "Jones.")

She added that her costar in the original, Hugh Grant, didn't know anything about the sequel, either.

"Neither of us has seen scripts, neither of us has a start date and neither of us has committed because there is nothing to commit to," Zellweger said. "I don't know what is going to happen. None of us knows anything about it."

Then again, "I would love to do it if it's right," she said. "Bridget is a character I care a lot about."